GPGPU - Applications

Applications

The following are some of the areas where GPUs have been used for general purpose computing:

• MATLAB acceleration using the Parallel Computing Toolbox and MATLAB Distributed Computing Server, as well as 3rd party packages like Jacket.
• k-nearest neighbor algorithm
• Computer clusters or a variation of a parallel computing (utilizing GPU cluster technology) for highly calculation-intensive tasks:
  • High-performance computing clusters (HPC clusters) (often termed supercomputers)
    • including cluster technologies like Message Passing Interface, and single-system image (SSI), distributed computing, and Beowulf
  • Grid computing (a form of distributed computing) (networking many heterogeneous computers to create a virtual computer architecture)
  • Load-balancing clusters (sometimes termed a server farm)
• Physical based simulation and physics engines (usually based on Newtonian physics models)
  • Conway's Game of Life, cloth simulation, incompressible fluid flow by solution of Navier-Stokes equations
• Statistical physics
  • Ising model
• Lattice gauge theory
• Segmentation – 2D and 3D
• Level-set methods
• CT reconstruction
• Fast Fourier transform
• Tone mapping
• Audio signal processing
  • Audio and Sound Effects Processing, to use a GPU for DSP (digital signal processing)
  • Analog signal processing
  • Speech processing
• Digital image processing
• Video Processing
  • Hardware accelerated video decoding and post-processing
    • Motion compensation (mo comp)
    • Inverse discrete cosine transform (iDCT)
    • Variable-length decoding (VLD)
    • Inverse quantization (IQ)
    • In-loop deblocking
    • Bitstream processing (CAVLC/CABAC) using special purpose hardware for this task because this is a serial task not suitable for regular GPGPU computation
    • Deinterlacing
      • Spatial-temporal de-interlacing
    • Noise reduction
    • Edge enhancement
    • Color correction
  • Hardware accelerated video encoding and pre-processing
• Global illumination – ray tracing, photon mapping, radiosity among others, subsurface scattering
• Geometric computing – constructive solid geometry, distance fields, collision detection, transparency computation, shadow generation
• Scientific computing
  • Monte Carlo simulation of light propagation
  • Weather forecasting
  • Climate research
  • Molecular modeling on GPU
  • Quantum mechanical physics
  • Astrophysics
• Bioinformatics
• Computational finance
• Medical imaging
• Computer vision
• Digital signal processing / signal processing
• Control engineering
• Neural networks
• Database operations
• Lattice Boltzmann methods
• Cryptography and cryptanalysis
  • Implementation of MD6
  • Implementation of AES
  • Implementation of DES
  • Implementation of RSA
  • Implementation of ECC
  • Password cracking
• Electronic Design Automation
• Antivirus software
• Intrusion Detection
• Bitcoin peer-to-peer currency relies on a distributed computing network for performing SHA256 calculations where GPGPUs have become the dominant mode of calculation
• Increase computing power for distributed computing project like SETI@home, Einstein@home