But what is a GPU, and why is it important?
Spoiler: Its not about games, or even graphics.
A GPU, on the other hand, is really, really good at math.
Acer
Specifically, they can multiply big numbers, and they can perform many, many operations in parallel.
This makes them good for generating complex 3D graphics, but they are used for much more.
“I have many colleagues who use it in medicine to get MRI results.”
“Now, supercomputing clusters are also being made with GPUs.
They are used for scientific calculations, engineering, etc,” says Bonastre.
Another advantage of the GPU is that its easy to scale up.
A GPU is also great for processing photographs.
Serpa compares a CPU to a sports car, and a GPU to a bus.
The bus is a lot slower, but it can shift a lot more people.
What About Your Phone?
The GPU in your phone is used to drive its super high-resolution display, and to launch the graphics.
On the iPhone, the GPU is used for image recognition, natural language learning, and motion analysis.
That is, it processes images and video as you shoot them, and more.
GPUs are great for big data, machine learning, and image processing.
But thats not all.
Apples recent iPhones and iPads contain a “Neural Engine.”
This is a big chip, specially designed to carry out machine-learning tasks.
Machine Learning
Perhaps the biggest buzzword in computing right now is “machine learning.”
GPUs are perfect for this because they can view more examples per second.
However, once that training is done, the GPU is no longer needed.
Any learned algorithms can be run faster by the CPU.
Now, lets go back to Intels new Iris Xe Max GPU.
Yes, including AI.
The Iris Xe Max is designed for machine learning.
Perhaps its first task will be to learn how to pronounce its own name.
