Stream processor

A special type of coprocessor is referred to as a stream processor and at the same time a small scalar processing unit that can occur in such coprocessors.

Stream processor as coprocessor

As stream processing a coprocessor will be referred to, the data streams (engl. Stream ) can handle. The processing is characterized above all by a high degree of parallelism . Many applications come from the area of high performance computing (HPC).

Historical development and most interesting stream processors

Stream processor had ATI (now available from AMD acquired) first part of the X1x00 presented series. These were graphics cards which, by adapting the drivers , were not only able to render graphics , but also to process other data streams . AMD calls this type of data processing “stream computing”. With the introduction of its unified shader architecture for graphics cards, Nvidia also presented graphics processors that can be used as stream processors. Nvidia markets this under the term " CUDA " (Compute Unified Device Architecture). AMD also presented a unified shader architecture. Because the unified shaders are much more flexible in programming than the previous rendering pipelines, these graphics processors are particularly well suited for processing various data streams, i.e. for using them as stream processors.

Stream processors as (small) scalar computing units

Scalar computing units that can perform individual scalar computing operations on a data stream are called stream processors or stream processing units. A combination of such small stream processors or scalar computing units can be found in the graphics processors / stream processors that are based on the unified shader architecture. By combining scalar computing units, not only processing of scalar operations, but also vector processing is possible.

See also

• Vector processor
• General Purpose Computation on Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU)
• Unified shader architecture

Individual evidence

1. ↑ R580 GPU as stream processor ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ ATI Radeon GPUs and first applications. ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ General information from AMD on Stream Computing and definition of "What is Stream Computing?" ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ nVidia: GPU Computing Technology

Web links

• Block diagram of the GeForce 8800 in stream processor mode from Computerbase.de