The rise of the GPU

Posted on 10 Nov 2009 at 15:25

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 1 of 5

Gallery

Power to the people

With prices in the region of £10,000, GPU-accelerated computing may sound like it's the sole domain of those with deep pockets and seriously power-hungry applications who can justify the expense. In reality, you might be able to join the GPU computing revolution now for no expenditure on hardware at all. Rather than relying on dedicated GPU computing cards such as the Tesla C1060, some software publishers have included support for the GPU already present on the graphics card inside your computer.

One of the first companies to take advantage of the GPU in this way is Elcomsoft, which offers a range of password-recovery solutions that allow you to open encrypted files even if you've lost the password. As a processor-intensive task, but one that can easily take advantage of parallel processing, this is a classic example of an application that can employ the parallel processing architecture of the GPU to great effect. The company claims that where a typical PC with a Core 2 Duo could try out 350 cryptographic passwords per second in attempting to open an Office 2007 document, with a GeForce GTX 295 graphics card at the ready, this would increase to 8,400 per second. When you bear in mind that opening a document encrypted using even relatively weak 40-bit encryption can take several days on an ordinary PC, it's clear just how significant an improvement this really is.

Going mainstream

Impressive as this speed-up may sound, password recovery isn't exactly an everyday requirement. But GPU acceleration is starting to become mainstream as yet more software publishers recognise the benefits on offer. Adobe, for example, has provided GPU acceleration for both ATI and Nvidia graphics cards in Photoshop CS4, the latest version of this popular image- editing software. The GPU creates a user interface that can be manipulated much more responsively than would be the case if the CPU had to do all the work.

Included on the list of benefits are real-time image rotation, zooming and panning, plus the instantaneous and smooth viewing of changes. Adobe Photoshop CS4 also taps the GPU for 2D and 3D compositing and high-quality anti-aliasing, which makes jagged edges of text and objects a thing of the past.

GPU computing is also enabling 'processor-heavy' video-editing and transcoding applications from the likes of CyberLink, Nero, ArcSoft, Elemental and MotionDSP, as well as more common distributed processing applications such as Folding@Home and SETI@Home.

Advanced support for the GPU has even made an appearance in Windows 7. Of course, GPU support in the operating system isn't a prerequisite for application support - both Elcomsoft's password-recovery solutions and Adobe Photoshop CS4 will work with Windows XP or Vista - but it does mean that some tasks will automatically benefit. For example, Windows 7 has built in transcoding so you can drag and drop a video file from your desktop to your portable player and it will immediately begin converting that file using the GPU.

Microsoft has also greatly expanded the role of DirectX in Windows 7 with four new APIs, all of which can take advantage of a GPU. This will provide performance gains in 2D graphics, gaming and multimedia, irrespective of whether or not the application supports GPU acceleration.

Meanwhile, the fact that so much GPU acceleration is built into Windows means that the technology is becoming standard. As software developers start to assume that a system will have a powerful GPU inside it, we can expect GPU support to snowball. Mac users can also now enjoy the same advantages since Apple added GPU acceleration to Snow Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X.