Many of the latest supercomputers are based on accelerators, including the two fastest systems according to the 11/2013 TOP500 list. Accelerators are also becoming widespread in PCs and are even starting to appear in handheld devices, which will further boost the interest in accelerator programming.
This broad adoption is the result of high performance, good energy efficiency, and low price. For example, comparing a Xeon E5-2687W CPU to a GTX 680 GPU, both of which were released in March 2012, we find that the GPU started out four times cheaper, has eight times more single-precision performance and four times more main-memory bandwidth, and provides over thirty times as much performance per dollar and six times as much performance per watt. Based on these numbers, accelerators should be used everywhere and all the time. So why aren’t they?
Image: http://www.hpcwire.com
To read the original article: The Future of Accelerator Programming
