“Graphics chipmaker Nvidia Corp. is in the early developmental stages of its first Mac-bound GPGPUs,” AppleInsider reports.
“Short for general-purpose computing on graphics processing units, GPGPUs are a new wave of graphics processors that can be instructed to perform computations previously reserved only for a system’s primary CPU, allowing them aid in the speed of non graphics related applications,” AppleInsider reports.
“GPGPUs have proven most beneficial in applications requiring intense number crunching, examples of which include high-performance computer clusters, raytracing, scientific computing applications, database operations, cryptography, physics-based simulation engines, and video, audio and digital image processing,” AppleInsider reports.
“It’s likely that the first Mac-comptaible GPGPUs would turn up as build-to-order options for Apple’s Mac Pro workstations due to their ability to aid digital video and audio professionals in sound effects processing, video decoding and post processing,” AppleInsider reports.
“Precisely when those cards will crop up is unclear, though Nividia through its Santa Clara, Calif.-based offices this week put out an urgent call for a full time staffer to help design and implement kernel level Mac OS X drivers for the cards,” AppleInsider reports.
More info in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Masa” for the heads up.]
Nice!!
How do u disable iphones annoying opening of iphoto everytime i dock it?
iPhoto preferences/general
connecting camera opens: select “no application”
Schwing.
This will be handy for a future revision of the iPod Touch or iPhone when you’re waiting in an airport and you want to play around with hypothetical global climate changes, shifting ocean currents, event horizon mapping or just to sequence your genome.
” . . . is in the early developmental stages . . . “
What would that be in Microsoft years? Does anyone have a conversion table nearby?
This is just what I want. I plan to get back into scientific programming and parallel processing. It will be interesting to see how using Nvidia’s technology compares in performance with the parallel technology taking advantage of multiple CPU cores using the SSE4 instructions.
@Ampar
As a general rule of thumb, I use the “Dog Slow” rate when describing Microsoft, so give them 7 years.
Nividia put out an urgent call for a full time staffer to help design and implement kernel level Mac OS X drivers for the cards.
Cha Ching!
Anyone here going to be answering Nvidia’s call?
Read the article. They state a 45 to 415 TIMES inproved performance – not %!
Is this really possible?
The return of the math co-processor! Sweet and totally retro!
It’s about time. Seems like graphics card developers have always given Windows boxes the upper hand in this area. I.e., we get some of the same big games and graphics apps as Windows has, but our workstations, while faster at the core, actually output slower because of the graphics bottle neck. So yeah, it’s about time.
Like any multi-processor solution, doesn’t this GPGPU require both OS and Xcode support for applications to take advantage of the speed boost?
If they build it will anyone (be able to) use it?
@ themanx: You could do what HotinPlaya wrote or you could just delete the Camera Roll from your iPhone like a normal person would. Insert your iPhone, wait for iPhoto to open, import photos, delete originals, and if there are any pics that you actually want to keep on the phone move those pix to an album that syncs with your phone.
@ Ampar,
1 Apple Year = 1 Googol Microsoft Years
Google googol
Thanks, Sixvodkas and Roberto. I was going to use Excel to figure it out but, well . . . that was a butt well.
Indeed! This is “retro”, and over-due, and only marginally useful.
Back when this was a high-value feature, anything costing under $10,000 had but a single CPU, and that with a single core. The Amiga had a family of chips that worked together to make the system faster.
So, “it’s about time!“
About its current value … somewhat limited. The primary need for a graphics card is to provide more frames per second than the game player can visualize using more effects than the player can comprehend. We’ve been working on over-kill for several years now. Way beyond the pale. The graphics card designers need an outlet for the overkill built into their cards, this is one such possibility. Except! All Macs, and many other new systems, feature multiple cores – often on multiple chips. Anything the GPGPU can do can also be done in a second (fourth, eighth) core. Still, if you play games often enough to want such a card, it can offer a third (fifth, ninth) “core” when you are not playing games. That ‘last core’ being potentially more powerful than any of your others – for heavy math, at least.
Overall, a Good Thing … but nothing to get worked up over.
Dave M
@ Ampar,
You’re on her, Your Honor.
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@Roberto
She offered her honor, he honored her offer
And all night long in was on’er and off’er
comeon, who else is here waiting for the quad-core macbook pro
Actually, a 24″ Al-iMac Quad is on my shopping list, rather than a Quad MB or MBP. The 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad is priced at $277(?) or so and would do wonders! Replace my G5 Dual with no problem, boost my Folding@Home rate by half (at least) and speed my podcasting output as well. My laptop is intended for mobile computing, not desktop replacement, and can get by with a single core on a single CPU … which doesn’t mean a second core would not be welcomed. A Quad would be wasted on the likes of us, with our simple wants and simpler needs.
Dave
Sounds like the DSP from the Quadra AV series meets AltiVec, on a graphics card.
Applications could probably take direct advantage of this hardware (assuming the drivers expose the appropriate hooks) without OS-level support, but the greatest gains would come from Apple updating framework code like Core Animation and NSOperation to use this automatically when available. Then developers calling these frameworks get instant benefit.