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Graphic processing units are finding a greater mainstream computing role, thanks in large part to the efforts of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices in promoting the technology for general-purpose computing. GPUs from these vendors and others are cropping up in coprocessing roles in workstations from the likes of Dell and Hewlett-Packard, as well as HPC (high-performance computing) offerings from vendors such as Appro and Verari Systems. The benefits of GPUs, from their ability to run such tasks as video applications to the fact that they can hold significantly more processing cores than CPUs, dovetail with the increased demand from consumers and businesses for better performance around such diverse workloads as video, gaming and math-intensive applications. Officials with AMD, which bought ATI for $5.4 billion in 2006, announced in May that they were merging their processor and graphics businesses. Intel also is increasing the graphics capabilities of its processor technologies. AMD gained ground on market leader Nvidia in the second quarter, thanks to its Radeon graphics cards, which were released in 2008.
By Jeffrey Burt
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- Coprocessing is Here
New operating systems such as Apple's "Snow Leopard" Mac OS X with OpenCL and Microsoft's Windows 7 with DirectCompute interfaces are being designed to utilize GPUs for tasks that go beyond graphics. Coprocessing leverages the sequential architecture of CPUs and the massively parallel architecture of GPUs to enable splitting of an application's workload between the two. - High Performance
A GPU in a laptop can do face recognition or video processing 10 times faster than the CPU in the same laptop. Such capabilities are important as consumers rely more on media than text to tell their stories. A GPU's parallel architecture is well-suited for many of those tasks, such as video and photo editing. Apple will begin using more of AMD's ATI Radeon HG 4870 video cards in its Mac Pro systems. The iMac systems also will offer AMD's HD 4850 cards. - More Power
GPUs can hold many more processing cores than can CPUs. For example, the latest Nvidia Tesla GPUs contain 240 cores and are poised to double every 12 to 18 months, far outpacing CPUs and Moore's Law. - Low Power Consumption
The modern GPU offers more performance per watt of any processing architecture, which means it can be deployed within a much smaller power footprint than rival architectures. The Dell Precision T7500 workstation comes with Nvidia Tesla GPUs, creating what officials from both vendors call a "personal supercomputer." - Write Once, Run Everywhere
The same GPU computing program can run from netbooks to laptops to supercomputing clusters. Cell phones are next. Appro's HyperPower HPC compute cluster combines Intel's "Nehalem EP" processors with Telsa GPUs from Nvidia. - Application Acceleration
GPUs are good at accelerating mainstream applications, including video encoding, fast media conversion, video editing, DVD upscaling, real-time video enhancement and photo touch-ups, and soon will include database acceleration and business intelligence. HP's Z800 workstation holds up to two Nvidia Tesla GPUs. - From Games to Science
Many math-intensive applications can leverage the GPU to dramatically accelerate calculations: scientific research, seismic exploration, financial trading, virus modeling, etc. The Tsubame supercomputer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the 41st fastest supercomputer in the world, according to Top500.org, uses GT200 GPUs from Nvidia. - Speed
AMD in 2008 introduced the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, which includes the RV790 chip. The chip, shown here on a wafer, is the size of a dime and has broken the 1 teraflop (1 trillion floating point operations per second) barrier.
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