Has anyone ever considered this... is it possible?

[Jeff7181]

I was just thinking... GPU's a very powerful number crunchers... would it be possible, or worthwhile to write a DC program that can use the video card's GPU to help crunch some numbers???

 

[DaFinn]

It is possible... you would just need an access to the low level coding program that the chip manufacturer has used to code for that chip.
This, I think is not so easy!

I have a friend that works for BitBoys (stop laughing... seriously... NOW!) who did the coding for their chip. He said, that basically anything a CPU can do, a GPU can do.

... but again, they used (and everybody else) a low level coding prog developed in house.

 

[BlackMountainCow]

There actually has been someting in the forums about this recently ... some guys managed to get a damn good result out of some GPUs ... like way way way better than any P4 or Athlon64. Just use the search ... u might find it again.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: BlackMountainCow
There actually has been someting in the forums about this recently ... some guys managed to get a damn good result out of some GPUs ... like way way way better than any P4 or Athlon64. Just use the search ... u might find it again.

Hehe... Good luck searching the forums if you're not or are no longer a subscribing member. Oh wait, that should be...

 

[RaySun2Be]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=39&threadid=1210306&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=39&threadid=1210306&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=

Wow, I didn't know anybody was that far along with general-purpose GPU programming.

This has also been discussed at some length over at Folding-Community. Oh, and if they do come out with a DC project for GPUs (assuming the kind of math F@H does isn't optimized for that - and even if it was, the developers are terribly reluctant to port to anything other than x86 and Mac), then it would give me an incentive to upgrade my GPU, to be able to run F@H and this other project at the same time, with no performance degradation.

 

[Jeff7181]

If it's possible to use the GPU, then I wonder if it's also possible to use my Audigy 2?

 

[DaFinn]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
If it's possible to use the GPU, then I wonder if it's also possible to use my Audigy 2?

Which runs at... what 1Khz? Not much processing power in there!!!

 

[narzy]

my M-audio revolution would kick the cr@p out of your audigy 2 .

 

[titanmiller]

I would love to have the ability to run DC projects on the GPU, I believe that a 5950 would equate to a P4 @ 10+GHz in raw computational power.

I am pretty sure that it will happen sometime, but if it isnt done correctly it wont be worth it.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: titanmiller
I would love to have the ability to run DC projects on the GPU, I believe that a 5950 would equate to a P4 @ 10+GHz in raw computational power.

I am pretty sure that it will happen sometime, but if it isnt done correctly it wont be worth it.

But if the GPU's strengths are floating point calculations... aren't most DC projects mostly integer calculations? Or no?