Mark Knecht <markknecht <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 1) I don't think the GPU latencies are much different than CPU > latencies. A lot of it can be done with DMA so that the CPU is hardly > involved once the pointers are set up. Of course it depends on the > system but the GPU is pretty close to the action so it should be quite > fast getting started. Privately, multi-core and GPUs are license for some folks to build out using the latest FPGA in massive efforts for some large clusters. These clusters are very private and the latency issue alluded to is gone and very much a positive attribute, if you have large sums of cash.... > 2) The big deal with GPUs is that they really pay off when you need to > do a lot of the same calculations on different data in parallel. A > book I read + some online stuff suggested they didn't pay off speed > wise until you were doing at least 100 operations in parallel. I always knew you were very sharp (Mark) here a few websites to further establish what you are saying. [1] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/passware-kit-101-cracks-rar-and-truecrypt-encryption-in-record-time-99539629.html [2] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-gpu-wifi-hack,6483.html These are just the tip of the berg.... > 3) You do have to get the data into the GPU so for things that used > fixed data blocks, like shading graphical elements, that data can be > loaded once and reused over and over. That can be very fast. In my > case it's financial data getting evaluated 1000 ways so that's > effective. For data like a packet I don't know how many ways there are > to evaluate that so I cannot suggest what the value would be. When you license core technologies, put them on FPGAs or ASICs and have lots of money, you can build special purpose busses that move data around very fast and massive on that custome hardware. Consumers and business don't want to pay for that sort of thing, but others are far ahead of the hacker-trains using massive numbers of workstations around the net. Those massive hacker efforts use the Internet like a buss. Others build custom busses that are faster and with more bandwidth that what vendors put under a 10G ethernet interface. A lot of very smart folks are studying the hacker communities with advance hardware for analysis, like you cannot believe. What the original poster has proposed, has been around for a long time. Ever wonder why not much progress is being made by the related open-source projects (compared to what's going on behind deep_pockets)? The best hope is for AMD stock to fall to a point where the owners are truely desparate. Then AMD may be motivated to offer something that every Linux user (world wide) want to go out and purchase... just my opinion... hth, James
