[GRASS-dev] GRASS and GPGPU

[Glynn Clements]

Dylan Beaudette wrote:

> Of course, as GPU's become faster 
> far more quickly than CPU's and the PCI Express interface improves, it will 
> make more sense to offload large processing to GPU's. "

This presumes that you actually *have* a GPU.

Many servers only have very basic graphics hardware. Even with desktop
systems, there's a huge performance difference between budget systems
(with e.g. integrated graphics or a £20 card) and "gaming" systems
with a £300 card.

Also, the difference between various GPUs (even different models from
the same vendor) tend to be quite significant, and not easily hidden
by the compiler. You could realistically find that you need to write
half a dozen radically different versions of the same function just
for the most popular GPUs, and also need to re-write it regularly, as
GPU architecture tends to change quite rapidly.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>