raphics processors have come a long way during the
past few decades. Over the years, these cards have
added greater and greater processing power to handle
ever more sophisticated graphics. It has now gotten to the point
where the graphics card can actually possess more computing
power than the system's CPU. is increase in power is causing
many people to think twice about how the graphics card is actu-
ally used. e graphics processor has now become a co-processor
in the system, allowing for a much wider range of applications.
At fi rst, graphics cards were nothing more than display adapt-
ers, leaving all the number crunching to the CPU. As process-
ing power was added to these cards and the clock speeds of
chips became faster, so, too, did the speed of the work station's
graphics. ere came a time, however, when faster clock speeds
simply weren't enough, and companies started adding more
processors to distribute the load. Graphics are particularly well
suited for parallel processing, since diff erent parts of a display
can be handled with discrete processors.
September 2009 21
Graphics Cards
■ ■ ■ ■
Graphics processors have
come a long way over the
past few years, taking on
more processing tasks.
Image
courtesy
AMD.
