The GPU enters computing's 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 computing's 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 Microsoft's Xbox to high-end visualization systems from Hewlett-Packard and SGI. The GPUs act as coprocessors to CPUs such as Intel's Pentium, using a fast bus such as Intel's 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.