NVIDIA Fermi GPU eyes supercomputing arena

NVIDIA has announced its new Fermi graphics processor unit (GPU) architecture at the GPU Technology Conference mid-week. "Fermi differs from ordinary GPUs, as it's the first to be designed from the ground up for general-purpose computation..." elaborated NVIDIA spokesperson Andrew Humber to TechNewsWorld. In fact, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be building a new supercomputer based on it.

Just how different is it? Well, Ars Technica described NVIDIA's general strategy as a "two-pronged" approach of pleasing gamers while also meeting the need to number crunch at the supercomputing end. While NVIDIA has erred on the side of hardcore PC gamers in the past, Ars Technica noted that "Fermi marks the point at which NVIDIA has officially begun making its discrete GPU tradeoffs favor the HPC market at the expense of gamers."

With AMD and Intel building GPUs into processors, and the undeniable fact that PC gamers are a dying breed, I suppose it is not rocket science to figure out why NVIDIA is hedging its bets the way it has.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at TechNewsWorld
- check out this article at Ars Technica

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