When we go to the store today to purchase a computer, we are buying something almost completely different than we bought twenty years ago. After I outgrew my Commodore 64 my mom purchased and built my first very own computer with a cutting edge 486 DX66 processor. That processor was used for sound, video, applications and pretty much everything else with the exception of components that were in place to assist with just a few simple tasks (for example sound cards would offload a small amount of cycles to free up the main processor’s usage).

Now, even less expensive computers come equipped with graphic processors that have the capability of turning itself into a processor with hundreds of cores that assists the main processor with tasks that have nothing to do with graphics. With the recent release of Directx 11, these graphics cards have the capability of being used by Windows just like the main processor does. This gives the advantage of being able to process a ton of information at once at a slower speed (GPU) alongside of being able to process less at very high speeds (CPU).

Interestingly enough NVIDIA has based their Tesla super computer systems off of these graphic chips, charging literally thousands of dollars more for a GPU turned CPU that is 5 generations behind the currently available GPU chips that come in normal computers nowadays. Soon everyone will possess this same power.

At the same time, Intel is taking strides to eliminate the need for a graphics card or chip completely with the recent release of their Core i3/i5/i7 processor line. Now that we have multi-core CPUs, Intel is integrating graphics instructions to be used by one or two of the processor cores which drastically lowers the power requirements of the device and makes the whole computer simpler and cheaper.  Prepare yourself for a new age of super fast portable devices.

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