- Definition: GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)
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The chip that drives the display (monitor) and generates the images on the screen. It has also been called a Visual Processing Unit or VPU. The GPU processes the geometry and lighting effects and transforms objects every time a 3D scene is redrawn. These are mathematically intensive tasks and hence the GPU has upward of hundreds of floating point processors (also called Shaders or Stream Processors). Because the GPU has so many powerful 32-bit floating point processors, it has been employed as a special purpose processor for various scientific calculations other than display and is referred to as a GPGPU in that case. The GPU has to be compatible with several interface standards including software APIs such as OpenGL and Microsoft's DirectX, physical I/O standards within the PC such as Intel's Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) technology and PCI Express, and output standards known as VGA, DVI, HDMI, and Display Port. The GPU has its own private memory on a graphics AIB which is called a frame buffer. When a small (less than five processors) GPU is put inside a Northbridge (making it an IGP) the frame buffer is dropped and the GPU uses system memory.
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