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    GPU computing processor ?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Gryffindor, Aug 20, 2007.

  1. Gryffindor

    Gryffindor Newbie

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    NVIDIA® Tesla™ C870 GPU computing processor

    What exactly does this technology do? Can you hook one of these to your desktop/laptop via PCI slot and speed up your computer or what? :confused:
     
  2. Changturkey

    Changturkey Notebook Evangelist

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    Isn't that for engineers and such?
     
  3. Gryffindor

    Gryffindor Newbie

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    No idea, was trying to find out about it.
     
  4. fabarati

    fabarati Frorum Obfuscator

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    It's an upcoming GP (General Purpose) GPU that's based on G80.

    Here's wiki's definition of a GP GPU
    Basicly, Tesla GPGPU's=very powerful, push out more flops than a regular CPU.
     
  5. grateful

    grateful Notebook Evangelist

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    reading is fun

    we saw three major advantages to NVIDIA's approach. First, by bypassing 3D APIs, there's no concern about future drivers breaking an application as has plagued them in the past; consider Folding@Home's initial release on R580 and the continued absence of G80 support as an example. Second, it makes GPU computing more accessible by allowing developers to write their applications in a potentially more familiar manner, as opposed to shoehorning their application to fit within a 3D API's paradigm. Finally, it allows developers to access portions of the chip that they wouldn't be able to use directly in a 3D API.

    the information above was not my own, I grabbed it from::

    http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/77
     
  6. tebore

    tebore Notebook Evangelist

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    Holy crap looks like Nvidia will be the 3rd player in the rendering farm field along side AMD and Intel. Things are getting interesting. Maybe AMD/ATI will hop on a similar bandwagon but hopefully puts a but of focus on the home/power user.
     
  7. chinmonkie

    chinmonkie Notebook Evangelist

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    so what is it like a hybrid between a physics card and a graphics card in one O.O ... *Imagines how hawt that card is * drools ;O~~~~
     
  8. Akilae Hunter

    Akilae Hunter Notebook Consultant

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    You can think of a GPU as a CPU of as many cores as it has pipelines. So a g80, with 128 stream processors would basically operate as fast 128 (or 32 quads or whatever the hell... dont get on my back about minutia) single-core CPU's on the same instruction set with the same problems at the same clock frequencies. The parallelism is what makes quantum computing appealing.

    A side effect of this GPGPU tech is that it can greatly increase the performance of problems that have traditionally needed farms or supercomputers to run. It really wouldn't be useful as high-i/o or server processors, but would be awesome at things like protein folding.
     
  9. chinmonkie

    chinmonkie Notebook Evangelist

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    the day they make quanitum CPUS is the day ill be the happiest man on earth... T.T