Stream Processors. What Is It?

[faint545]

As the title entails, what are stream processors and what kind of role does it play in graphic cards? I've searched it on wikipedia.com but im still unclear as to what it is/does.

[liambl]

Stream processors or Unified Shaders, replace the seperate pixel and vertex shaders in older cards. They play a large role in the cards performance, as these are what renders the scene. Applications are starting to be released which use the Stream Processors for uses other than rendering images (Folding@Home for example). The more you have/the faster they are clocked the faster you can render a scene (more FPS).