Scientific computing on commodity graphics hardware

Abstract

Driven by the need for interactive entertainment, modern PCs are equipped with specialized graphics processors (CPUs) for creation and display of images. These CPUs have become increasingly programmable, to the point that they now are capable of efficiently executing a significant number of computational kernels from non-graphical applications. In this introductory paper we first present a high-level overview of modern graphics hardware's architecture, then introduce several applications in scientific computing that can be efficiently accelerated by CPUs. Finally we list programming tools available for application development on CPUs. © Springer-Verlag 2004.