NEWS CATEGORIES:



NEWS ARCHIVE >>
SOFTPEDIA REVIEWS >>
Home / News / Technology / CPU

CPU


AMD Talks about Asymmetric Physics Processing

3 is not a crowd anymore

By Ionut Ciocirlie, Hardware Editor

10th of January 2007, 11:44 GMT

Adjust text size:


AMD got into the renaming business and it seems to be doing pretty well. Anything from CPUs to chipsets goes as long as they can make it look (and sell) better. Now I really don't know if that logic applies to a segment which previously had no name. Nevertheless AMD's products
are getting really stylized names lately. Too bad they don't perform as well as they sound.

To detail things a little further, the hardware requirements for "Asymmetric Physics Processing" (yep, that's the name!) include two AMD ATI Radeon based graphics cards and the needed CrossFire motherboard. One Radeon will be used as GPU with the additional Radeon acting as a PPU. But as you can see in the picture, you can also setup a "Three Play" configuration in order to use a Crossfire setup and a PPU card.

ATI's Triple Play physics processing is what really matters here but this time you'll have to use two ATI Radeon graphics cards operating in CrossFire. The third card (that is not necessarily the same model as the first two) will run in PPU mode.

While Asymmetric Physics Processing requires two AMD ATI Radeon graphics cards for the processing tasks, the graphics cards don't need a physical link (like CrossFire) in order to work together. In fact, the ability to process the physics tasks asymmetrically is built in the driver, motive for which AMD claims it will also be able to pair different cards for such operations.

At the moment, AMD's chipsets are the only one that can support the APP technology. AMD 580X, ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 (for Intel) and the upcoming RD790 will all be able to host APP enabled cards. As for INTEL's chipsets, their compatibility with APP devices is unknown but I bet that if it doesn't work, it's a driver issue.


Rating:
Fair (2.2/5) 8 vote(s) so far    

Read by 1,272 user(s) | Add comment | Link to this article
Subscribe to news | Print article | Send to friend

© Copyright 2001-2008 Softpedia
Contact:

 

 

SEARCH THE NEWS ARCHIVE :




Today's News
| Yesterday's News | News Archive


MORE RELATED ARTICLES:


AMD 65nm CPUs Are on the Market

INTEL Compares Its CPUs with AMD Ones

AMD Delays 690 Chipset

AMD Forms Architecture Lab

AMD's RD790 Is on Its Way

User opinions:

No user comments yet.
Be the first to express your opinion using the form below!

Share your opinion:

You are not logged on. Please provide your name and email address.
Log on to get your comments posted and visible instantly.
Your Name:
Your Email Address:
(will not be used for commercial purposes)
Solve this to prove you're not a bot: =
Your review/opinion:

 






SUBMIT PROGRAM   |   ADVERTISE   |   GET HELP   |   SEND US FEEDBACK   |   RSS FEEDS   |   ENTER NEWS SITE   |   ENGLISH BOARD   |   ROMANIAN FORUM