Talk:Graphics processing unit

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This Page has been directly quoted in PCWorld Magazine in the October 2006 edition, on the article about GPU's.--Tiresais 08:22, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

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NVIDIA Corporation coined the term around 1999 to describe its GeForce range of graphics chips, based on the abbreviation "CPU" for a computer's central processor. However, Sony may have used the term in 1994 to describe the graphics hardware inside its PlayStation game console.

Okay, so if Sony or nVidia coined the term "GPU", how does one explain this?

The information in question has been removed until verification. Thanks for pointing to this issue. Optim 15:19, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Why has the comment that nVidia coined the term been restored? GPU was being used in the mid 1980s, and nVidia was founded in 1993 Crusadeonilliteracy 13:20, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've been wondering that for a while now. I'll try to fix it. -lee 22:53, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I removed the claim once more. Please do not add it again, since (as demonstrated above), the term has been in use LONG before NVidia has been on the scene. -- uberpenguin 02:59, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

What? If it showed up again between January and December, I didn't put it there. Please get your attributions straight. -lee 22:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't singling you out, nor was I blaming you for adding it. It's just a general warning to anybody involved not to re-add the text. -- uberpenguin 23:42, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Untrue Claim 2 RAM 3 Transistors 4 The article should be split or moved 5 Which GPU has a 3D accelerator on it? 6 History re-ordered 7 Microsoft bias in the history section? 8 Rename or broaden

[edit] Untrue Claim

"Several (very expensive) graphics boards for PCs and computer workstations used digital signal processor chips (like TI's TMS340 series) to implement fast drawing functions,..." TMS340 never was a DSP, this was a VDP (from my knowledge term VDP is also missused to other chips than TM340 familly). TMS34010 and TMS34020 from programmer point of view was a normal CPU but this familly has additionaly special instructions for graphic operation and highly integrated graphics subsytem ie vertical and horizontal counters, with these counters and additional hardware this VDP was synchronized with electron beam (this claim is valid for CRT displaying technology). TMS340 can be used to build normal uComputer - they dont need for normal calculations ie not graphics any additional - universal CPU's. Also from my knowledge TI DSP (TMS320) was used as a part of the various graphics subsystems (for acceleration of the calculation).

I went ahead and fixed this (though it's been a while now). -lee 15:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RAM

The article needs to make better sense of the whole RAM thing. It states that:

A GPU will typically have access to a limited amount of high-performance VRAM directly on the card, which offers much greater speed than dynamic RAM, though at much greater cost. For example, most modern cards have 256 MB of VRAM, with some having as much as 512MB of VRAM, whereas the computer itself may have 1GB or more of system memory.

But both RAM links redirect to Dynamic random access memory. And when I was looking at video cards, most of them listed that their ram was DDR - the same kind as the standard system memory. So is the video RAM really a different type of RAM, or is it just in a different place - on the video card as opposed to in the mother board's main DIMM slots?

Well, today most cards are using GDDR3 which is definitely not in-use on motherboards. But some cheaper cards use DDR2, or even regular DDR SDRAM. And before that cards used SDRAM, EDO DRAM, FPM DRAM. So yes the RAM chips are often absolutely the same as those used for the system. The implementation of them is just different. Graphics boards can run their memory faster because it is easier to make the bus faster if it is short and the RAM is directly soldered on the board instead of in sockets. And, of course, because graphics boards often use faster specced RAM chips. --Swaaye 04:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Eh... No, the real utility of having onboard RAM is that it is dedicated, not that its implementation is somehow faster than that of primary storage. Graphics card memory (which is more or less used for framebuffer and texture memory) is directly addressable by a GPU and therefore isn't subject to all the delays involved in having to utilize the CPU (or DMA of some sort) for main memory access. The physical parameters of the graphics expansion board have pretty much no bearing on making the RAM somehow "faster" (at least in the context of this discussion). Rather, the onboard memory is dedicated for usage by the GPU and therefore invokes much less latency than using computer primary storage would. I'll improve this article's treatment of on-card memory a bit... -- uberpenguin @ 2006-03-30 04:40Z

This isn't entirely correct. The fact that it is local memory is the key factor in lower-end cards where memory bandwidth isn't a limiting factor. However, in high-end cards, speed is absolutely the most important feature of video card ram. Take the X1950XTX for example, its memory is clocked at 1GHz (2GHz DDR), far faster than any system memory to date. In short, video cards use a local batch of fast, dedicated memory to perform memory intensive functions. The faster the memory, the more performance you get. -- michaelothomas

I basically removed the offending text and cleaned up the paragraph a tad. This article doesn't need to explain the design motives regarding expansion cards, so I didn't really add any more content. -- uberpenguin @ 2006-03-30 04:54Z

[edit] Transistors

I think that GPU sizes are twice that of current generation CPUs. Is this true ? Wizzy…☎ 08:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC) yeah i got 2 nVidia 8800GTX's and their 11"long 2"deep and 4" wide these are the first directX10 copatibale card on the market they have 756MB GDDR3 thesr things are gynormos

[edit] The article should be split or moved

1. No-one ever used the GPU term until nVidia invented it for GeForce 256 2. The correct name has always been "video card", and it continues to be used --Dmitry _{(talk •contibs )} 09:09, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose 1: See the first topic of this page.

2: There's no such thing as a correct term. NVIDIA might have coined it but, if you're saying that it is not in common usage, you must be living under a rock still. rohith 19:44, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Still, though, the scope here does seem pretty narrow. As noted further down, people working in academic and industrial applications had GPUs and frame buffers long before Atari, Apple, IBM and Commodore made them common on PCs, and long before Nvidia started applying the term to the GeForce. I'm wondering if we should indeed merge the PC-specific items into the video card article (or perhaps another article like History of video hardware on personal computers) and leave this one for a general treatment of the subject (covering things GPUs do in general, like BitBLT, Bézier curves, etc), and some of the history I didn't know about when I first rewrote this. -lee 15:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Which GPU has a 3D accelerator on it?

Can someone tell which one is exactily, i coufused KanuT 03:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

hello! anywhat tell me Which GPU has a 3D accelerator on it KanuT 21:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

These days, they all do. Even really old cards like the ATI Rage family have at least some 3D capability. -lee 15:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History re-ordered

I think the history section needs to be re-arranged. For example, the following bit:

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, high-speed, general-purpose microprocessors became popular for implementing high-end GPUs. Several high-end graphics boards for PCs and computer workstations used TI's TMS340 series (a 32-bit CPU optimized for graphics applications, with a frame buffer controller on-chip) to implement fast drawing functions; these were especially popular for CAD applications. Also, many laser printers from Apple shipped with a PostScript raster image processor (a special case of a GPU) running on a Motorola 68000-series CPU, or a faster RISC CPU like the AMD 29000 or Intel i960. A few very specialised applications used digital signal processors for 3D support, such as Atari Games' Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin' games.

is under the "1970's" heading, despite clearly not being relevant to the 70's. I'd trivially cut&paste it into the 80's section, but I wonder if maybe it should be split up between the 80s and 90s? Emteeoh 20:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Will do. I don't know how that got split up like that. -lee 15:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Microsoft bias in the history section?

The history section of this article seems to concentrate overmuch on the impact of DirectX/Direct3D and its predecessors, only mentioning the older and far more developed standard OpenGL later on, and neglecting any mention of 3Dfx's Glide API or MiniGL. While DirectX did bring many of the mentioned features into general use among Windows users, they were generally not the first to bring them to market, or even into popular use. GreenReaper 04:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rename or broaden

above discussion notwithstanding, this strikes me as a reasonably competent version of what it is. however, it is NOT an article about GPUs in general. it is aritcle about the history of GPUs in PC applications, with emphasis on MS Windows.

There is little attention to basic theory of operation or general evolution of this type of processor. the word "vector" appears only twice. Scalability issues are not addressed. pioneers in vector proessing and computer imaging with little PC involvement like Cray, TI, or SGI are not mentioned at all.

No sense criticizing an apple for not tasting like a pear, but we shouldn't call it a pear either. i suggest that either the scope of the article be broadened or the title be changed to better reflect the content and a separate, more general GPU article (linked to this one) be started.

- ef

I have to agree here. I wrote most of the beginning a while back; it was even worse then (apparently someone thought NVIDIA had invented the term!). Unfortunately, most of my knowledge of graphics systems comes from the PC and consumer electronics world; I'm familiar with some of the high-end stuff by name (E&S should be on that list too), but I don't really know enough to flesh this out. In any case, if you know more than I do, feel free to edit the article and add what you know. Thanks. -lee 14:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)