Stream Processors, Inc. at ISSCC '07

Thursday 22nd March 2007, 10:10:00 AM, written by Rys

JPR were at the 2007 Internation Solid State Circuits Conference, and one class of processing definitely caught their eye. The guys cover GPU-based stream computing, Stream Processing, Inc. (SPI) and the market in general, comparing SPI's Storm-1 to fixed function devices that do the same job, to see what's what, before returning to GPUs to wrap it up.

Here's a snippet:

Perhaps in the longer term, the most enticing high volume market for future media processors like SPI’s could be displacing a combination of DSP + 3D/2D chip. DSPs today are the rule for digital voice, where soft-programmability is a requirement. And in designing Storm-1, the company did pay attention to optimizing power efficiency.

Carriers are ramping more services demanding multiple standards, as well as features like imaging, 3D/2D graphics and not just video playback but even camcorder support. Take a look at Nokia’s N93, for example. And while the jury is most assuredly out with respect to how customers value (i.e. are willing to pay for) such services, the combination of disparate yet concurrent media processing may call for an architecture like SPI’s.

Read the article to find out what JPR's take is on a burgeoning new processing market is.

jpr ± isscc, spi, storm-1, gpu

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