GPU

A GPU (graphics processing unit) is analogous to a computer CPU, but is tailored to carry out the computations necessary for computer graphics, to serve as an additional processor. However, GPUs are also used for scientific computing, particularly in supercomputers, which has become another primary purpose of GPUs. Graphics, including computer animation, often includes similar kinds of computation to that of scientific computing, and when GPUs were developed and computer game systems were developed using single-chip GPUs, the economies of manufacturing large quantities of GPUs led to them becoming a relatively low-cost, efficient device for carrying out computations, and constructing supercomputers out of thousands of GPUs became an effective means of attaining the scientific computing capacity. Personal-computer software now also often takes advantage of the presence of one or more GPUs to carry out scientific computing, or any other computing requiring a lot of calculation.