lucky13
Group: Members
Posts: 1478
Joined: Feb. 2007 |
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Posted: April 25 2007,23:05 |
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| Quote | | why not lend some of that power to help the cpu? |
In a sense, that's what it does by offloading sound/video from system requirements of the CPU. I know you're talking about using it as a co-processor; like hats has already answered, that's a work in progress with some of the newer hardware (see link below).
| Quote | | Even if they were cheap cards, they would give an awesome boost when there is 11 of them... |
Eleven cards in seven PCI slots?
| Quote | | Does anyone know how to do this? |
Not yet. I also think the jury's out about how functional this will be in the long run -- a la the hammer:jackhammer analogy (a jackhammer is an immensely more powerful tool than a regular hammer, but it's not a better tool for driving a nail into a specific juncture of two pieces of wood). For now it looks like it's best suited for clustering. For an example, see "Why Use CUDA technology?" (which looks like is supported on RHEL4 and WinXP):
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html
| Quote | | ...would Seriously bring people to Linux |
I'm not sure that will do much beyond enterprise-level clustering and companies or universities looking for cheaper super computing options -- (edit) who are already using Linux or for whom Linux is already an option.
Many people are holding off from upgrading to Vista because it requires either a brand new computer or some serious upgrades (including video card if they want Aero). I don't see how they'd be lured by a distro recommending two or more video cards for a mini/home GPGPU cluster when Linux is a viable option with the hardware they already own and they're already reluctant to add new hardware (video cards).
| Quote | | X-fi is a sound card, but it takes all kinds of instructions |
I think at that level, it would be more efficient -- cheaper and easier -- to either upgrade a CPU or even to overclock (which I don't recommend). That's what I would do because I see that as solving one "problem" (slow CPU/motherboard) with another (using a different piece of hardware to solve the original "problem" which remains in place).
And even if you do offload a few CPU cycles to a sound or video chip, you're still confined by things like FSB speed, etc. On older systems, probably not worth the hassle. On newer systems (XP-level +), it could be more useful but that takes me right back to the point above about the reluctance people have to adding extra hardware as well as the point about using video cards to solve a mobo "problem" (if it is a problem).
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