VR-Zone

While AMD is thriving in the desktop and notebook GPU markets, Nvidia still dominates the workstation and HPC markets. It is clear that Nvidia takes HPC very seriously, with the latest Fermi-based Tesla cards release shortly following the GTX 400 series. This focus on HPC is further aided by software support and marketing campaigns. AMD, thus far, has been largely invisible in the HPC market. Despite characteristics least desirable for HPC usage - high power consumption and heat dissipation - Tesla is already being embraced..

However, customers are wishing for an alternative - a more efficient, more powerful GPU. After 9 months, AMD is finally releasing a Firestream variant based on Evergreen.

The first Evergreen Firestream products are likely to be Cypress based. With cloud computing being rapidly accepted, and cloud gaming services coming into existence, it is clear HPC is a large and booming market. Nvidia anticipated this early on, and have the marketing and software in place. In fact, most of Fermi's features are beneficial for HPC applications.

It is clear that AMD are the chasers. In terms of efficiency and raw number cruching power, AMD has a significant advantage. Whether it can exploit this potential into actual compute processing, remains to be seen.

AMD plans to promote the new Firestream as a platform, alongside Opteron CPUs upto 12 cores.

Reference: Xbitlabs