Graphics processors supercharge everyday apps

Hey cool! I never even thought of graphics processors helping with non-graphic needs on the PC. What a novel idea!

Chapel Hill (NC) - Originally developed to remove a massive processing workload from the CPU, some scientists examine how the graphics processors can accelerate non-graphic applications as well. The Geometric Algorithms for Modeling, Motion, and Animation (GAMMA) Research Group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reported this week that Nvidia’s 7800 GTX reference card increased the speed of test applications by up to 35x.

Researchers with GAMMA said they found enormous performance capabilities in Nvidia’s newest graphics card that substantially outpaces its predecessor, the GeForce 6800 Ultra. Compared to the 6800, the 7800 tripled performance; without the help of a graphics chip, the speed gains were between 8x and up to 35x. The discovery points to the removal of a bandwidth bottleneck, which may lead to the unimpeded development of co-processing libraries and software development kits (SDKs) for everyday applications, such as spreadsheets and database management systems. [Read the rest]