Thread: Graphical Processing Unit

The Graphical Processing Unit is the computing core of a graphics card. These chips are designed to perform computations on graphical data much more efficiently than Gin CPUs. Modern GPUs are more complex than CPUs, iftransistor count be considered. One of the fastest GPUs today, the GeForce 8800 GTX, has 754 million transistors, while the fastest CPU, the quad-eore Intel Core 2 Quad, has 820 million transistors (including the 24 MB ofL2 cache memory).

GPUs can be subdivided into different areas specialising in a particular operation. The major sub-units are the Stream Processors, TMU, and Rap. Newer GPUs are released quicker than CPUs. The major manufacturers of GPUs are NVIDIA (the makers of the GeForce series) and ATI (the makers of the Radeon series).