It wasn't all that long ago we started to hear of this new fandangled type of technology referred to as "GPGPU", whereby a graphics processing unit is dedicated to general purpose computing tasks not unlike that of a CPU (only is said to be able to perform the tasks much more efficiently, thus very quickly!).

Moving on 6 to 8 months and already we see the first GPGPU product announced, this from AMD. They call it the "FireStream 9170" and it's based around their new RV670 core. It sports quite an impressive listing of specs such as 2GB of onboard GDDR3 memory, a 775-800MHz core clockspeed, 500 GFLOP/s, 320 shader processors and double precision support.

To get a better understanding of what this all means along with the potential benefits of harnessing GPGPU technology head over to Beyond3D.

If interested, the official announcement from AMD can also be found here folks.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the AMD FireStream 9170 Stream Processor and an accompanying Software Development Kit (SDK) designed to harness the massive parallel processing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU). AMD leveraged its unique collective expertise in both GPUs and CPUs to deliver the first integrated hardware and software development solution that meets the needs of the demanding high-performance computing (HPC) market. AMD plans to deliver the FireStream 9170 and supporting SDK to market in the first quarter of 2008. With this launch AMD expects to achieve another important milestone on the path to Accelerated Computing by delivering the first in a series of next-generation heterogeneous compute architectures.