New Media Resolutions Drive Storage Requirements [The Art of Storage]

Graphical processing units (GPUs) are special-purpose microprocessors that are used to accelerate a number of applications, such as artificial intelligence, media rendering, and big data analysis. These high-performance applications place stringent requirements on the digital storage and memory hardware as well as the managing software. New hardware and software show how specialized digital storage and memory can work together with high-speed processing to enable these applications. In Figure 1, Jensen Huang, the chief executive officer of nVIDIA, Santa Clara, California, is shown demonstrating that GPUs provide a way to continue the increase in processing speed, even with the slowing of Moore's law.