The GPU
From Xtreme3D
The GPU
Graphics Processing Unit | The GpuThe processor, designed for graphics rendering. From the central processing unit (CPU) is a special parallel architecture, which allows to solve some tasks much faster. Condition only one task must be observed parallelism.
The term was GPU ��������������� by NVIDIA, which in 1999 released a GeForce 256, and called it "the first GPU in history", although the Hardware dithering and relevant core appeared much earlier. So, the first arcade game machines with hardware T&L appeared in 1993 (Sega Model 2 and Namco Magic Edge Hornet Simulator). In consumer computer systems The first gpu appeared on the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 (1994-1996). On personal computers was one of the first dedicated graphics 3D-rendering was S3 Virge (1995), then the market leader has become the company 3Dfx Interactive was established, in 1996 and 2000, the Voodoo accelerator Graphics. Since 2000, the GPU market is divided between the NVIDIA, ATI (now absorbed by AMD) and Intel.
The GPU is designed for processing large arrays of similar data, such as points, vectors and pixels. Initially, the types of data that can be processed GPU (and the video processing algorithms) were strictly defined, but modern graphics processors are fully programmable - this means that the programr can send arbitrary data and perform any algorithms. This has led to the introduction of the term GPGPU - General Purpose GPU (GPU).