Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Using GPUs For General-Purpose Computing

Posted by timothy on from the transfer-of-duties dept.

Paul Tinsley writes "After seeing the press releases from both Nvidia and ATI announcing their next generation video card offerings, it got me to thinking about what else could be done with that raw processing power. These new cards weigh in with transistor counts of 220 and 160 million (respectively) with the P4 EE core at a count of 29 million. What could my video card be doing for me while I am not playing the latest 3d games? A quick search brought me to some preliminary work done at the University of Washington with a GeForce4 TI 4600 pitted against a 1.5GHz P4. My Favorite excerpt from the paper: 'For a 1500x1500 matrix, the GPU outperforms the CPU by a factor of 3.2.' A PDF of the paper is available here."

1 of 396 comments (clear)

  1. Apple's getting there by blackula · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Apple, innovative as always, is already making headway. Not in the way that paper describes, per se, but in other ways.

    They, of course, designed the first OS that takes advantage of the user's GPU in situations other than CAD and games; in situations for general purpose computing. The OS uses the GPU to render the UI; obvious sounding at first glance, but revolutionary in practice.

    Small steps though they may be, Apple is, as seemingly always is the case, ahead of the game.