GPU
Graphics Processing Unit — a processor designed for parallel computation, now essential for AI/ML training.
Also: Graphics Processing Unit
Definition
A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a specialized processor originally designed for rendering graphics but now essential for deep learning and scientific computing due to its massively parallel architecture. While a CPU has a few powerful cores optimized for sequential tasks, a GPU has thousands of smaller cores optimized for performing many simple operations simultaneously. Training neural networks involves billions of matrix multiplications that benefit enormously from GPU parallelism. NVIDIA's CUDA platform dominates the AI/ML GPU ecosystem.
Example
“Training a large language model on 100 CPU cores would take years; the same training on 1,000 NVIDIA A100 GPUs completes in weeks due to massive parallelization.”
Synonyms
- graphics processor
- parallel processor
- AI accelerator
Antonyms / Opposites
- CPU
- serial processor
Images
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Related Terms
- deep-learning
- cuda
- tensor
- distributed-training