[JohnFen]

> In theory, they can both do any computation, so they differ only in their performance characteristics

But surely, the exact same thing can be said when comparing any two different machines that engage in computations and can do conditional branching.

GPUs can be used for any computational task that a general CPU can be used for, but a GPU is optimized so it will do certain sorts of tasks much better (and as a consequence will be worse at other kinds of tasks). CPUs are meant to be adequate (if not spectacular) at any sort of task.

It seems to me characterizing GPUs as "specialized" and CPUs as "not specialized" is entirely correct.