Second Killer Application
To facilitate the adoption of a technology you must have a “killer application’. A use for the technology embraced by the public or business. Sometimes a technology that rose with one “killer application” will give rise to a new and different “killer application”. Graphics Processing Unit chips (GPUs) is an example.
One entertainment industry makes more money than Hollywood. But it is not likely to come to mind if you are over 40 years of age. The video game industry is the big money maker in the entertainment industry. This was the “killer application” for GPU chips. GPU chips are microprocessors on a discrete chip optimized for video rendering. The video card in your PC, Laptop, Gameboy, PS2, and others all have GPU chips which your video card is built around.
Why do you need both a Central Processing Unit (CPU) and a GPU in a computer? The answer is architecture. Over the years the video demands became increasingly intensive. The CPU was unable to keep up performing a combined function. The big players in the video card industry, NVIDIA and ATI, decided they needed their own discrete processing on their video cards to keep up with demands.
Animation takes a lot of processing power to render. A brief few seconds scene in “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones” might take 72 hours using a server farm. A server farm is acres of PCs linked together to perform a specific task. The new “killer application” for The GPU is using them to render animation instead of the CPUs. The GPU is designed for animation and can render faster than the CPU. Major animation studios are revamping their server farms focused on a GPU architecture. The 200 pound guerilla had been Intel. It is the market leader in CPUs. Intel is actively trying to stay in the game by modifying its CPU architecture.
With GPUs, the first “killer application” was video games. The new “killer application” is unloading processing demands from the CPU to the GPU’s unused processing cycles. The first adopter of this strategy is the big animation studios. Next will likely be applications on you PC, such as PhotoShop and Flash.
To facilitate the adoption of a technology you must have a “killer application’. A use for the technology embraced by the public or business. Sometimes a technology that rose with one “killer application” will give rise to a new and different “killer application”. Graphics Processing Unit chips (GPUs) is an example.
One entertainment industry makes more money than Hollywood. But it is not likely to come to mind if you are over 40 years of age. The video game industry is the big money maker in the entertainment industry. This was the “killer application” for GPU chips. GPU chips are microprocessors on a discrete chip optimized for video rendering. The video card in your PC, Laptop, Gameboy, PS2, and others all have GPU chips which your video card is built around.
Why do you need both a Central Processing Unit (CPU) and a GPU in a computer? The answer is architecture. Over the years the video demands became increasingly intensive. The CPU was unable to keep up performing a combined function. The big players in the video card industry, NVIDIA and ATI, decided they needed their own discrete processing on their video cards to keep up with demands.
Animation takes a lot of processing power to render. A brief few seconds scene in “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones” might take 72 hours using a server farm. A server farm is acres of PCs linked together to perform a specific task. The new “killer application” for The GPU is using them to render animation instead of the CPUs. The GPU is designed for animation and can render faster than the CPU. Major animation studios are revamping their server farms focused on a GPU architecture. The 200 pound guerilla had been Intel. It is the market leader in CPUs. Intel is actively trying to stay in the game by modifying its CPU architecture.
With GPUs, the first “killer application” was video games. The new “killer application” is unloading processing demands from the CPU to the GPU’s unused processing cycles. The first adopter of this strategy is the big animation studios. Next will likely be applications on you PC, such as PhotoShop and Flash.
posted by CartoonsTE | 10:49 AM
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