high performance computing on graphics processing units: hgpu.org

Astronomical photometry is one of the sciences, that benefit from the recent technological development in order to augment the quality and the quantity of the processed data. The planned projects, such as the European SOLARIS and the American LSST promises to generate the amount of data that will be a challenge for modern astronomical data reduction methods. It creates the need to search for new methods of data reduction. In the chapter a method that uses GPGPU for data reduction is investigated. The graphics processor that in its beginning aimed at fast screen image computation and presentation naturally adopt SIMD model of processing. This model fits very well in the reduction process of the contemporary photometric data received with the use of CCD cameras, that are in the two-dimensional form. The chapter presents the library for the photometric data reduction that uses flat field reduction, dark and bias current reduction with the use of CUDA environment, which enables to pass the computation onto graphics processors.