AMD breaks Teraflop limit (with Firestream 9250 GPU PCIe expresscard).

Yevgen Barsukov wrote:
Is it possible to stick it into a Windows based PC and expect S to
recognize
it as 10 CPUs (provided appropriate drivers), or are programs going to
access it
completely independently from S say using CL?


No, the GPU is not a general-purpose processor, even when you call it a
GPGPU (general-purpose GPU). It lacks some important functions that CPUs
have that are needed for basic running of a computer. The CPU is not
busy just doing maths all of the time, let alone floating-point maths.
The CPU runs many non-mathematical tasks, actually it mostly runs
non-mathematical tasks. You wouldn't even be able to boot your computer
up without a CPU.

The GPUs are optional processors specialized in floating-point maths,
which can be employed if a program needs it. The CPU has its own
floating-point facilities available. The CPU floating point is more
precise than GPU floating-point, but the GPU makes up for it in speed.
However, programs will usually not be aware what kind of GPU resources
are available to them, so they will usually use just the CPU
floating-point. So that's why it would be necessary to integrate a
standard interface into the S to support GPU-based calculations in a
vendor-independent way. Initially, the vendor-independence will be
achieved by standards like CL, but they will be plug-ins into the
S. Eventually, CL or some other similar standard will have to be
built right into the S, non-optionally.

Yousuf Khan