Comments on: Are GPUs the future of CPUs?

By: heey

heey — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:57:42 +0000

heey greeme consulting, you grammar speek good well me am inpresed. me dont know why coledge turn yu down ? must be stuppd or somethin.

By: Tim Wernette

Tim Wernette — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:05:34 +0000

this may or may not happen.. 800 stream processors doesn’t by any means mean it is equivalent to 800 core processor! the way gpu’s operate is quite a bit different then a CPU. look at the applications now are having trouble taking advantage of only 4 cores. it’s hard to design a program to stream well. CPU’s are better for flow control related programs and GPU’s are better for raw calculations. unfortunatly for the gpu, most business/normal use software is flow control dominated. this MAY happen, may not. most likely the future will be something in between both of these technologies.

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:34:34 +0000

In the near future probably not, in the distant future, well probably not either. You have to understand some of the tough hurdles to overcome before GPUs can be considered an option as a CPU replacement. As far as floating point performance in calculations per second GPU’s are supreme but they aren’t meant to be as accurate as the onboard FPU of a traditional processor. The resulting quality of tasks performed by a good GPU are often sub-par compared to CPU generated results.

Once you have overcame that obstacle than you have to consider RD time which runs concurrently with CPU R&D. Companies are making leaps in bounds in architecture with the aid of huge die shrinks localized bus procedure such as onboard memory control. There is no doubt that parallel processing is the wave of the future but lets consider Intels 80 core prototype.

This isn’t to say there isn’t anything to be learned from massive parallel processing. Give me GPU raw computational power with traditional FPU accuracy and “I’ll buy that for a dollar” – Robocop

By: Justin Frodsham

Justin Frodsham — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:08:48 +0000

I think you have it backwards. The GPU is the coprocessor that will go away. The GPU functions will be absorbed by the CPU. Every indication in the industry points to that. Why do you think AMD and NVIDIA are nervous about Larrabee? (whether they admit it or not)

By: seif

seif — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:15:43 +0000

i think its called GPGPU and APU, and Intell, AMD and Nvidia already on their way, the AMD Fusion, the Intel Larrabee, and Nvidia with entering the CPU wars.

also there is another branch, and that is the cell processors (used in PS3), it uses the CPU for managing the traffic and the Cells for Computational (8 cells, 1 for the OS, 1 is locked and the other 6 cells for applications with hyper-threading technology). its far more powerful than CPU’s.

so whether its GPGPU, APU, GPU with CUDA, or even cell processors. they all bring a huge computational power than now days PC’s, it will be a huge leap forward and the moor’s law will be broken

By: Yeah Maybe

Yeah Maybe — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:05:03 +0000

In 10 years maybe

By: Str1f3

Str1f3 — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:05:57 +0000

I think so. It’s only a matter of time. Since the introduction of Intel multiple core processors, there have been very little performance improvements off the CPU. The GPU will one day replace it some kind of new chip architecture.

By: greene consulting

greene consulting — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:41:01 +0000

oh the work I could do with card like that.
With Video cards not catching up with the CPUs we seen i wouldn’t be surprised that we see faster video cards before the years end . CPU get the push from wanting you systems fast for when ever work and the graphic cards took time as they were being used for gaming but now they are need for more than games . with the need for system for movies and TV effects the Mac is not seeing more growth but PC as well and Linux systems as well.
I one said 1979 that computer would be doing what model builders for movies did then. that computer graphics would take over building ting that look so real you could not tell.

I wrote that in March of 79 and used it 6 month later to make a request to study computer and art to be come computer graphic artist..i was turn down as they said no one would wast computers to do movie effects or to do art..Computer are for Science not art and to build buildings and things like that no one will own home computer that isn’t more a toy than a real computer..That was what was told in a letter that turn me down No one saw what could see that we were on the edge of change and with new graphic card as powerful as the one we now have we can do more than anything they at that college could ever dream

Lets a 1 GHz Processor with 3 gigs of ram on the card and the fast CPU you can buy and another 3 to 4 gigs or rams on your systems..the only thing that would limit you is your imagination and a bad OS lol

I like it ..I’ll wait till the Price is better but i get it.

By: Sushy™

Sushy™ — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:36:30 +0000

The thing is that GPU’s are really cheap, it would be a market with really high demand and really low value. I don’t think Microsoft or Apple would take advantage of it, I can see Linux doing it since they are mostly open source. Besides, there are already 900 mhz machines that run windows (like netbooks do) and they only have one processor. It would be quite cool if they used each stream processor for each process you have running on a computer. That would make everything more live-like.

By: Oli Kenobi

Oli Kenobi — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:32:34 +0000

Definitely agree! I’ve been wondering since a couple of years why the CPU manufacturers haven’t already used some GPU technologies… it’s about time!

By: Ninesvnsicks

Ninesvnsicks — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:50:43 +0000

I have also often thought this very same thing it does make a lot of sense.

By: Kerrick Long

Kerrick Long — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:34:06 +0000

Wow, I feel honored!

By: DellMan94

DellMan94 — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:30:51 +0000

I agree with you Chris. I think the CPU will go the same way as the co-processor did years ago. I wouldn’t miss it if the cpu was phased out anyhow, personally.

Cheers!
DellMan94

By: Bret Spector

Bret Spector — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:28:11 +0000

I think that that’s defiantly an interesting concept. I can see that happening though. In the future, I think that that’s going to happen sooner than we think…