[FONT=verdana,geneva]ATI Stream = [/FONT] [FONT=verdana,geneva]AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology
[FONT=verdana,geneva]In the current day and age there is more to graphics cards than just playing games. More and more non-gaming related features can and are being offloaded to the GPU. ATI at first introduced ATI Stream, this is now renamed to AMD Accelerate. This is a software layer that allows software developers to 'speak' with the GPU and have it process data using your graphics card. This really is the most simple & basic description I can give it.
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[FONT=verdana,geneva]Currently it simply follows and believes strongly in open standards as OpenCL or for the easiest path to add compute capabilities, Microsoft's DirectX 11 DirectCompute. OpenCL is what AMD believes in the most and allows any developer to use code that scales well on both CPUs and GPUs.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]To make things a little more clear for the end user, AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, will and is used in software like Cyberlink MediaShow and power director, ArcSoft MediaConverter 4, SimHD (upscaling, H.264 encoding), Total media Theatre (HW accelerated MPEG4/MVC ), Roxio Creator 2010, Adobe Photoshop CS4 and so on ... where the GPU assists the software in certain functions, offloading the processor.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]Of course among it also falls ... folding ...[/FONT]
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[FONT=verdana,geneva]Folding@home using the ATI Radeon series 6000 GPU
Folding at home is a project where you can have your GPU or CPU (when the PC is not used) help out solving diseases, folding proteins. Over the past years a lot of progress has been made between the two parties involved. And right now there is a GPU folding client available that works with Radeon series graphics processors. It is ATI Accelerate based, meaning that all Stream/accelerate ready GPUs can start folding.[/FONT]
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