The GPU enters computings mainstream

The Siggraph/Eurographics Graphics Hardware 2003 workshop, held in San Diego, will likely be remembered as a turning point in modern computing. In one of those rare moments when a new paradigm visibly begins changing general-purpose computingʹs course, what has traditionally been a graphics-centric workshop shifted its attention to the nongraphics applications of the graphics processing unit. GPUs, made by Nvidia (www.nvidia.com) and ATI (www.ati.com), function as components in graphics subsystems that power everything from Microsoftʹs Xbox to high-end visualization systems from Hewlett-Packard and SGI. The GPUs act as coprocessors to CPUs such as Intelʹs Pentium, using a fast bus such as Intelʹs Advanced Graphics Port. AGP8x has a peak bandwidth of 2.1 gigabytes per second - speed it needs to avoid inflicting bus starvation on data-hungry GPU coprocessors.