Someone explain what GPGPU is?

[hdgamer]

Is this where they put an actual cpu on the same card as the gpu?

 

[parityOCP]

GPGPU is a term used to describe a GPU that can run more "general purpose" software, such as Folding@Home, as opposed to just graphics-oriented programs such as games, imaging and CAD.

GPGPUs are good at running software that needs to perform similar mathematical operations to those used in graphics rendering; matrix transformations are a good example.

 

[hdgamer]

So why is this desirable on a graphics card? If all I want to do is run games as fast as it can with all the eye candy on?

 

[Ron Mexico]

So why is this desirable on a graphics card? If all I want to do is run games as fast as it can with all the eye candy on?

Well, being completely ignorant on the subject (me), I don't know what advantages it has to us, gamers. I'm sure game devs can do stuff with it, I guess time will tell (or, someone will learn me in a reply ).

 

[dr.stevil]

So why is this desirable on a graphics card? If all I want to do is run games as fast as it can with all the eye candy on?

Why not? It gives developers more options and resources which benefits everyone in the end. Granted, some don't/won't use them to their full potential, but there are some that do (or try to). Physics and AI are both offloaded from the CPU to the GPU these days which helps performance in general.

Besides that, it gives other (non-game) software developers an option for faster calculations than can be done on a traditional CPU. Movie/audio encoding, for instance, can be a LOT faster on a GPU than a CPU in many cases (for example).

It's good for everyone in the end. Why is an octo-core processor desirable over a quad core? or 4 cores over 2 cores? More performance and more resources availble to you

 

[MartinX]

I don't know what advantages it has to us, gamers...

Well this is the thing isn't it, as Kyle hinted in one of his front page hints, this generation may be the start of nvidias push to get out of the gaming market and into the highend work station/ low end hpc market.

Of the three major gpu producers, nvidia is the only one that isn't already involved in "serious" computing (obviously ATI/AMD also has a small sideline in cpus , and Intel is, well, intel).

If I was nvidia I would be looking at learning some new tricks, going toe to toe with Intel and AMD in the cpu space isn't really viable, there's just too much catching up to do, so I reckon they are trying hard to establish (their) gpgpus as a serious alternative in the marketplace to the more traditional approaches to computing before AMD/intel can swamp them.

Nvidia needs to be something else to survive, and I think gaming will increasingly slip further back in their priorities.

If I was nvidia I would be scared shitless, intel already owns the lowend graphics market, and when their cpu + gpu chips hit in the next few months there is a good chance that both ATI and Nvidia will be locked out entirely. That leaves the high and mid-ranges, Nvidia has always been strong in the high end, even this weeks "next gen" ati cards couldn't dethrone the gtx 295 as the fastest single card, but the high end is not profitable, the cards are expensive to make and don't sell in significant volumes, so there's very little revenue there. That leaves just the mid range, and competition there is fierce.

We lol at the very prospect of larrabee, I can promise you that despite any bravado on ATI and Nvidias part publicly, both are quaking in their boots at the prospect of any third player moving into the midrange market, especially a company that has pockets deep enough to fight for it like intel.

If larrabee has reasonable performance, and has a reasonable price it *will* take a chunk out of both ATI and Nvidia. Intel doesn't need to compete with the 5870x2 and the gtx380 (or whatever) to make life really miserable for the other players, and Nvidia stands to lose the most, because it's the only one-trick pony left in the race.

I really think that 2010 will be the defining year for the future of the graphics card industry as we know it, with the biggest changes to the game in a decade, and I think there's a very strong possibility that there will be blood, and it may be green.

 

[Ron Mexico]

Well this is the thing isn't it, as Kyle hinted in one of his front page hints, this generation may be the start of nvidias push to get out of the gaming market and into the HPC market.

Of the three major gpu producers, nvidia is the only one that isn't already involved in "serious" computing (obviously ATI/AMD also has a small sideline in cpus , and Intel is, well, intel).

If I was nvidia I would be looking at learning some new tricks, going toe to toe with Intel and AMD in the cpu space isn't really viable, there's just too much catching up to do, so I reckon they are trying hard to establish (their) gpgpus as a serious alternative in the marketplace to the more traditional approaches to computing before AMD/intel can swamp them.

Nvidia needs to be something else to survive, and I think gaming will increasingly slip further back in their priorities.

You certainly do make sense, and a lot companies do try to expand their markets, I just can't see them walking away from the gamer market. They are so good at making hardware for it, and it made them very profitable.

But, with how popular consoles are, and other market factors, you could very well be right.

Sigh...stupid consoles.

Not to start the console vs PC war, but.....might it be coming true sooner or later? Will consoles eventually.....god, I can't even say it.

I'm going to go and vomit now lol

 

[Silus]

Is this where they put an actual cpu on the same card as the gpu?

No. GPGPU means General Purpose GPU, which represent applications that take advantage of GPU resources to compute data / perform calculations.

GPUs are highly parallel units that are perfect for some types of calculations, where CPUs are totally outclassed, in terms of efficiency and computing capabilities.

NVIDIA changed the way GPGPU was done, because they offered CUDA with the release of G80 (8800 GTX), which is a high level language (much like C) to harness the power of their GPUs. As more and more programmable GPUs get, there is less the need for graphics APIs such as DirectX, because everything can be coded and sent directly to the GPU.

 

[Lorien]

Well this is the thing isn't it, as Kyle hinted in one of his front page hints, this generation may be the start of nvidias push to get out of the gaming market and into the highend work station/ low end hpc market.

Of the three major gpu producers, nvidia is the only one that isn't already involved in "serious" computing (obviously ATI/AMD also has a small sideline in cpus , and Intel is, well, intel).

If I was nvidia I would be looking at learning some new tricks, going toe to toe with Intel and AMD in the cpu space isn't really viable, there's just too much catching up to do, so I reckon they are trying hard to establish (their) gpgpus as a serious alternative in the marketplace to the more traditional approaches to computing before AMD/intel can swamp them.

Nvidia needs to be something else to survive, and I think gaming will increasingly slip further back in their priorities.

If I was nvidia I would be scared shitless, intel already owns the lowend graphics market, and when their cpu + gpu chips hit in the next few months there is a good chance that both ATI and Nvidia will be locked out entirely. That leaves the high and mid-ranges, Nvidia has always been strong in the high end, even this weeks "next gen" ati cards couldn't dethrone the gtx 295 as the fastest single card, but the high end is not profitable, the cards are expensive to make and don't sell in significant volumes, so there's very little revenue there. That leaves just the mid range, and competition there is fierce.

We lol at the very prospect of larrabee, I can promise you that despite any bravado on ATI and Nvidias part publicly, both are quaking in their boots at the prospect of any third player moving into the midrange market, especially a company that has pockets deep enough to fight for it like intel.

If larrabee has reasonable performance, and has a reasonable price it *will* take a chunk out of both ATI and Nvidia. Intel doesn't need to compete with the 5870x2 and the gtx380 (or whatever) to make life really miserable for the other players, and Nvidia stands to lose the most, because it's the only one-trick pony left in the race.

I really think that 2010 will be the defining year for the future of the graphics card industry as we know it, with the biggest changes to the game in a decade, and I think there's a very strong possibility that there will be blood, and it may be green.

This.

What is worse is that Nvidia has no chip fabrication plant at all, while Intel and AMD have their own. Nvidia is entirely dependant on TSMC for fabrication of their chips. If TSMC has any problem with manufacturing Nvidia suffers delays, and development costs pile up. At present ATI is also using TSMC but they will make the transition to AMD's spin off Global Foundries in the future.

 

[hdgamer]

No. GPGPU means General Purpose GPU, which represent applications that take advantage of GPU resources to compute data / perform calculations.

GPUs are highly parallel units that are perfect for some types of calculations, where CPUs are totally outclassed, in terms of efficiency and computing capabilities.

NVIDIA changed the way GPGPU was done, because they offered CUDA with the release of G80 (8800 GTX), which is a high level language (much like C) to harness the power of their GPUs. As more and more programmable GPUs get, there is less the need for graphics APIs such as DirectX, because everything can be coded and sent directly to the GPU.

I can see why they want to move in this direction, but it's not really desirable to me and probably a majority of casual gamers/ pc users. I mostly use my pc for games, internet, music production, and movies. Basically doesn't sound like anything my cpu which is already not the bottleneck of my system can handle. I guess time will tell with this though.

 

[stateofjermaine]

I'm wondering if these GPGPU's might be of some benefit to gamers who are "CPU-limited," and don't want to put the $ into i7/i5 rigs.

 

[ikarinokami]

the aim is clearly the htpc market. but i certainly could see some artist/scientist game developer going crazy with the fermi. it seems to me that one could do a lot of really cool things with a game world esp with physics.

 

[Silus]

I can see why they want to move in this direction, but it's not really desirable to me and probably a majority of casual gamers/ pc users. I mostly use my pc for games, internet, music production, and movies. Basically doesn't sound like anything my cpu which is already not the bottleneck of my system can handle. I guess time will tell with this though.

They are not marketing these features to you...

How many times does it take for people to understand the very simple fact that NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference was NOT aimed at gamers. It was aimed at developers, since Fermi brings huge improvements for developers, with features that can take the HPC market without challenge for a few years.

Wait and see the performance results in games, with the Fermi based consumer cards (which most likely will not have many of the features shown in Fermi's presentation).

 

[Silus]

This.

What is worse is that Nvidia has no chip fabrication plant at all, while Intel and AMD have their own. Nvidia is entirely dependant on TSMC for fabrication of their chips. If TSMC has any problem with manufacturing Nvidia suffers delays, and development costs pile up. At present ATI is also using TSMC but they will make the transition to AMD's spin off Global Foundries in the future.

I think you need to read about what's AMD's stake in GlobalFoundaries

Having no fabrication plant is not bad at all, unless you have huge amounts of cash. That was exactly the problem with AMD and its fabs. They had to let them go, otherwise they WOULD be bankrupt in a year or two. Maintaining fabs is quite expensive.

 

[Tamlin_WSGF]

So why is this desirable on a graphics card? If all I want to do is run games as fast as it can with all the eye candy on?

If all you want to do, is to run games as fast as they can, this is not desirable. However, I assume most uses pc's to more then gaming and thats where GPGPU becomes interesting. Things that runs slow on CPU can be offloaded to GPU, so it will go faster. There is also other benifits then just faster. If you run movies, GPU's can upscale those movies to higher resolutions realtime with higher quality. This is all thanks to GPGPU.

Take a look at SimHD to get an example:
http://www.arcsoft.com/public/software_title.asp?ProductID=493