A graphics processing unit or GPU (also occasionally called visual processing unit or VPU) is a

specialized processor that offloads 3D graphics rendering from the microprocessor. It is used in
embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. ..

 Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics, and their highly parallel structure
makes them more effective than general-purpose CPUs for a range of complex algorithms. In a personal
computer, a GPU can be present on a video card, or it can be on the motherboard. More than 90% of new
desktop and notebook computers have integrated GPUs, which are usually far less powerful than those
on a dedicated video card.

Graphics processing unit, an electronic processor dedicated to displaying images.

Most computers are equipped with a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) that handles their
graphical output, including the 3-D animated graphics used in computer games. The
computing power of GPUs has increased rapidly, and they are now often much faster than
the computer's main processor, or CPU.

The CPU or Central Processing Unit is where all the program instructions are
executed in order to derive the necessary data. The advancement in modern day
CPUs have allowed it to crunch more numbers than ever before, but the
advancement in software technology meant that CPUs are still trying to catch up.
A Graphics Processing Unit or GPU is meant to alleviate the load of the CPU by
handling all the advanced computations necessary to project the final display on
the monitor.

GPUs where originally developed to render 2D graphics; specifically, to

accelerate the drawing of windows in a GUI. But as the need for 3D and faster
graphics acceleration grew, the GPU became faster and more specialized in its
task. GPUs are now generally floating point processors that can easily crunch
geometric computations along with texture mapping tasks.

1. CPU is the brain of the computer the GPU is only meant to complement it.
2. GPUs are specialized and cannot replace the function of a CPU.
3. CPUs can perform the functions of a GPU but at a much slower speed.
4. GPUs can rival CPUs in transistor count.
5. GPUs can also work in tandem just like the CPU’s multi core capability.

In the most recent generations of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), the capacities of per-pixel
and texturing operations have greatly increased. Millions of these GPUs are already present in
the computers of consumers worldwide. Today you can easily apply those texturing and pixel
engines, originally designed for 3D modeling and rendering, to many classic image-processing
problems to provide tremendous speed increases over CPU-only implementations—and without
any compromise in final image quality.
In general, GPUs approach 2D image processing as a restricted form of 3D processing. Quite
simply, a quadrilateral polygon is aligned to the desired image-screen rectangle and rendered;
either to the screen or to an off-screen buffer in memory. The rendering can be done using
either of the common graphics APIs: OpenGL or DirectX.

Each pixel in the rendered image can have image-based texturing applied (up to 16
simultaneous input images per pass can be accessed), and each pixel can run one or more small
programs, called pixel shaders, to generate the final output color at each individual pixel.

The GPU executes these shaders for many pixels at a time in parallel. Multiple passes of
rendering may be executed, and the GPU provides additional image-blending hardware to
permit images to be built-up in composited layers of arbitrary complexity.

The results of each rendering pass, or any disk image, can likewise be passed back into the GPU
pixel shader engine as another texture. This means that arbitrarily complex compositing
operations can also be expressed as pixel shader operations. Image pixels can even be used as
address indices into other images.

OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a standard specification defining a cross-language,

cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics.

An application programming interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software

program that enables it to interact with other software.

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks

related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms.