using GPU as other CPU? not sure on forum for this.

[tommo123]

will we ever get cards that windows can use as a CPU with many cores? I mean so that the OS itself can use it as well as any program? not having to be written specially for it i mean.

i'm posting in this forum but suppose it could be in gpu or OS section.

 

[Smoblikat]

I dont see it being used as a general processor, but many programs currently implement GPU acceleration. Mostly media programs though.

 

[tommo123]

i want it for video mainly but everything i've seen or heard of is poor. it speeds up the process but afaik you don't have the same control as you do with other programs.they just give you fast output but the quality is poor.

 

[Topweasel]

will we ever get cards that windows can use as a CPU with many cores? I mean so that the OS itself can use it as well as any program? not having to be written specially for it i mean.

i'm posting in this forum but suppose it could be in gpu or OS section.

Video card specially ones from AMD are getting closer and closer to a near CPU like experience. Also things like Intel's XeonPhi is built off of idea's from Larrabee which was supposed to be a GPU made of simple x86 cores.

The end problem that we will always run into is the GPU's need to do a bunch of really simple instructions lightning fast and CPU needs to do a handful of complicated instructions kind of fast. Which means a GPU needs lots of really slim "cpu's" to do their jobs, "CPU's" that to make slim don't have the important parts that general CPU cores need to deal with all of the types of work it will see. Where a CPU will need to be pretty complicated to support the thousands of uses cases that people need it to be able to process. The final straw though is the easiest answer to your question. A really good CPU design for just about any job including stuff we do with our Ryen's and i7's if starting today wouldn't be using x86. GPU's don't have to be tied down to x86 and even if they got more complicated and wider it still would never look like x86. Therefore no potential for Windows to see it as additional cores.

Now for using the GPU as "CPU's" there is Cuda and OpenCL. Plus things like Crypto mining. That can leverage the stuff a CPU would normally be doing that happen to run better on a GPU, use the GPU for that.

The one thing I can think of that is the closest to what you are describing. A computer's built up of computers. Like a Supercomputer but on a smaller level like PXE boxes where you have the main box which is a system in it's own right but can have expansion cards that are basically computers themselves. The utilization of those cards are still dependant on supported tool and not as simple as seeing more cores in Taskmanager. You would just use a software suite that could talk to the expansion cards and have them do the job they are supposed to.

 

[Yakk]

Programming massively parallel instructions is hard. Add the fact that all these parallel tasks have to be simple instructions, but which probably depend on the results of instructions which may, or may not be received in time slows down everything.

A GPU is not necessarily the best tool for all tasks.

 

[tommo123]

Video card specially ones from AMD are getting closer and closer to a near CPU like experience. Also things like Intel's XeonPhi is built off of idea's from Larrabee which was supposed to be a GPU made of simple x86 cores.

The end problem that we will always run into is the GPU's need to do a bunch of really simple instructions lightning fast and CPU needs to do a handful of complicated instructions kind of fast. Which means a GPU needs lots of really slim "cpu's" to do their jobs, "CPU's" that to make slim don't have the important parts that general CPU cores need to deal with all of the types of work it will see. Where a CPU will need to be pretty complicated to support the thousands of uses cases that people need it to be able to process. The final straw though is the easiest answer to your question. A really good CPU design for just about any job including stuff we do with our Ryen's and i7's if starting today wouldn't be using x86. GPU's don't have to be tied down to x86 and even if they got more complicated and wider it still would never look like x86. Therefore no potential for Windows to see it as additional cores.

Now for using the GPU as "CPU's" there is Cuda and OpenCL. Plus things like Crypto mining. That can leverage the stuff a CPU would normally be doing that happen to run better on a GPU, use the GPU for that.

The one thing I can think of that is the closest to what you are describing. A computer's built up of computers. Like a Supercomputer but on a smaller level like PXE boxes where you have the main box which is a system in it's own right but can have expansion cards that are basically computers themselves. The utilization of those cards are still dependant on supported tool and not as simple as seeing more cores in Taskmanager. You would just use a software suite that could talk to the expansion cards and have them do the job they are supposed to.

like a cluster? tried something for video encoding a decade or more ago but it never worked right. besides, my PCs and laptops are always running 24x7 anyways.

i was just imagining (hoping really) that since it seems like GPUs are being built up to being able to take on more (and different kinds of) work that in the end all that horsepower that's sat doing nothing when i'm not gaming or being used for dxva or something would be used.

shame

thanks for the replies though guys

 

[Topweasel]

like a cluster? tried something for video encoding a decade or more ago but it never worked right. besides, my PCs and laptops are always running 24x7 anyways.

i was just imagining (hoping really) that since it seems like GPUs are being built up to being able to take on more (and different kinds of) work that in the end all that horsepower that's sat doing nothing when i'm not gaming or being used for dxva or something would be used.

shame

thanks for the replies though guys

Yeah something like a cluster. It's just a different take on distributed computing. The main box is running Windows, but the other systems basically boot to specialized FW and the main system just shuffles out the instructions they have to handle. The advantage is it's all in one box. It's also how Supercomputers work. They have a few management and control systems that handle the communication to the rest of the server, but the hundreds of CPU's that are running are all basically CPU and memory "system boards" that don't really boot into anything. Unlikely we ever see a true drop in "cpu expansion". Specially with the core growth we are already seeing and the existence of multi socket machines. These cover 99.9999% of the use case. Even something like XeonPhi that is as close to what you're thinking, it's a co-processor, that again has to be specifically programed for, even if it's closer to using standard x86 than any other solution.

 

[tommo123]

couldn't justify buying more hardware (or set it up to be fair) but I was just hoping 5 or 10 years now that a GPU wouldn't be this useless lump when not gaming.

 

[bigboxes]

couldn't justify buying more hardware (or set it up to be fair) but I was just hoping 5 or 10 years now that a GPU wouldn't be this useless lump when not gaming.

Unless your mining, gaming is why you have a dGPU. Especially with today's integrated graphics.

 

[Mr Evil]

You might be interested in looking at KGPU, which lets Linux run things on the GPU.

I'm pretty sure I remember reading about someone who wrote a whole OS to run on a GPU too, just to prove it could be done, but I can't find it now.