Week 5 Posting - BSIT200 - Graphics Processing Unit (Review)

    This week we learned from Mike about building a computer and when he got to the portion about building a gaming PC he talked about the graphics cards he wanted to put into the computer. I was interested in this topic because I've always heard friends talk about the latest GPUs, especially recently with Intel announcing their new Arc A770 and Nvidia with their 4000 series coming out. I've always been interested in just what the GPU really does for the computer -  I even bought a higher-end laptop with an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super - but never took the time to really research it (the book covers it in Chapter 17).

    A Graphics Processing Unit is a specialized processor that was originally designed to accelerate graphics rendering. It processes many pieces of data simultaneously, making them useful for machine learning, video editing, and gaming applications. It can also be either integrated into the computer's CPU or offered as a discrete hardware unit on a Graphics card. In newer laptops and computers it comes with both integrated graphics and a much more powerful graphics card. GPUs are best known for their use in gaming and are becoming more popular for use in creative production and artificial intelligence. The GPU assists the CPU by taking on the workload of accelerated computer graphics.

    The most popular GPU manufacturer is Nvidia with AMD not so close in second. Some people would say that Nvidia almost has a monopoly on the GPU market, but Intel and AMD are working hard to rival them. Nvidia's new RTX 4090 is a new and pioneering GPU that utilizes DLSS 3.0 which makes use of a new generation Optical Flow Accelerator in the Lovelace generation RTX GPUs. Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is a new image rendering technology developed by Nvidia that uses deep learning to produce an image that looks like a higher-resolution version of an original lower-resolution image. I would like to do more research on GPUs and Nvidia's DLSS technology. This video talks about the new GPU and goes deeper into how it all works together. Very interesting to see how technology has evolved.