[lutorm]

I don't understand how he can say that a CPU is as efficient as a GPU at floating-point operations. Yeah, maybe on a per-core basis, but you are comparing (like) 8 cores to (like) 240.

The basic difference is that the silicon used for hiding memory latency (cache) in a CPU is used for more raw computational power and memory bandwidth in a GPU. So if the data are structured so they fit into the data-parallel paradigm, the GPU will kill a normal CPU. Not because of some magic, but because they were designed to do that.

You wouldn't try to run an operating system on a GPU, or a web browser, or whatever. But to say that a GPU only can handle rasterization is to vastly understate the realm of applicability. There are plenty of fp-intensive, data-parallel tasks that fit very well into a GPU paradigm. A lot of scientific calculations, for example.