Why GPUs Are Great for AI
NVIDIA News, Monday, December 4,2023
Features in chips, systems and software make NVIDIA GPUs ideal for machine learning with performance and efficiency enjoyed by millions.
GPUs have been called the rare Earth metals - even the gold - of artificial intelligence, because they're foundational for today's generative AI era.
Three technical reasons, and many stories, explain why that's so. Each reason has multiple facets well worth exploring, but at a high level:
- GPUs employ parallel processing.
- GPU systems scale up to supercomputing heights.
- The GPU software stack for AI is broad and deep.
The net result is GPUs perform technical calculations faster and with greater energy efficiency than CPUs. That means they deliver leading performance for AI training and inference as well as gains across a wide array of applications that use accelerated computing.
In its recent report on AI, Stanford's Human-Centered AI group provided some context. GPU performance 'has increased roughly 7,000 times' since 2003 and price per performance is '5,600 times greater,' it reported.