ATI Stream is essentially a amalgamation of all of ATI's previous initiatives like Close To Metal (CTM), Compute Abstraction Layer (CAL), and Brook+ (AMD’s modified Brook open source compiler), encompassed under a single brand. The goal, as NVIDIA has done to some degree with CUDA and PhysX, is to not only take ATI Stream mainstream, but to also better serve the enterprise and HPC spaces with easier access and standardized programming tools.

As they have been made more and more programmable over the years, it has become obvious that GPUs are well suited to accelerating more than just graphics. With ATI Stream, AMD plans to work with developers in an attempt to leverage the power of the GPU to enhance the functionality of media creation, office productivity, and entertainment applications, among others as well.

According to representatives from AMD, stream and / or GPU computing are well suited to a number of multimedia-related applications, like sound / music editing and obviously graphics / design applications, as we have seen recently with Adobe's CS4 announcement. But there are also plans to accelerate desktop and office productivity applications--perhaps by speeding up searches or navigating massive databases--and operating system functions as well, i.e Aero Glass, etc. And in the entertainment space, obviously accelerating graphics is priority, but advanced physics and AI could benefit from ATI Stream as well.

You can read the entire article at HotHardware.