Cool! I remember when there was an Internet hoax running around about a dedicated SETI at home crunching card. Everyone was all excited about the idea of pumping out gobs of work units day ana night with them. I wonder if the low cost (video card = cheap, super computer = not cheap) video card could be used to do this. There may be life yet for last years craphics card, you know, the one that it will only display a bazillion textures and a million FPS… 😛
The Scout programming language, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, US, lets scientists run complex calculations on a computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) instead of its central processing unit (CPU).
In tests, the graphics processor was able to perform certain types of calculation 12 times faster than a single CPU.
Graphics processors generate smooth and realistic three-dimensional imagery by performing rapid calculations on visual data. And the latest graphics chips rival CPUs for raw processing power, thanks to consumer demand for hardware powerful enough to support the latest 3D computer games.
“These chips normally sit idle when scientists work,” says Patrick McCormick, a LANL researcher. “They have all this processing power but it’s just not being used.”
Computer graphics card reveals supernova collapse
(Thank you agent Greg for this info)