Thursday, May 01, 2008

Graphics Processors Enable Low Cost Super-computing

One of the recent hypes in silicon valley is Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Designed for graphics display in personal computers, GPUs present highly parallel computing capabilities. Now, more and more people are starting to find GPUs as cheap alternatives to perform parallel computing, which were traditionally restricted to super-computers.

From the General Purpose GPU (GPGPU) initiative, to NVidia's CUDA platform, GPUs are launching a battle to lure more researchers (and pragmatic software developers) to adopt their usage. It remains to be seen whether this is all just a hype or will the momentum keep on. But if it really takes off, what we are seeing now could be the dawn of a new computing era.