GPUs: A Closer Look
Stanford University
Queue, Vol. 6, No. 2. (2008), pp. 18-28.
A gamer wanders through a virtual world rendered in near- cinematic detail. Seconds later, the screen fills with a 3D explosion, the result of unseen enemies hiding in physically accurate shadows. Disappointed, the user exits the game and returns to a computer desktop that exhibits the stylish 3D look-and-feel of a modern window manager. Both of these visual experiences require hundreds of gigaflops of computing performance, a demand met by the GPU (graphics processing unit) present in every consumer PC.
October 30, 2010 by hgpu