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Panda

As mentioned in class, the additional space (not being used for cores) is being used for things like graphics.

teamG

One interesting question that I always had in mind is why it's a good idea to have integrated graphics on a CPU, on top of the CPU cores. Wouldn't it be a better idea to focus all power on the CPU, as opposed to needing to power both?

althalus

@teamG, I am not sure, but I think the idea is that a GPU has hardware specifically to handle graphic-related stuff, such as rendering, which would take longer on a normal CPU without the specialized hardware.

narainsk

I've heard from multiple sources that GPUs tend to more energy efficient than multi-core CPUs for most applications. Is this true, or does it only hold for specific types of applications (i.e. graphics)?

tdecker

I think that gpus specialize on doing the same operation to many values at the same time similar to how simd instructions work but for many many more values. So if I wanted to sum the values in an array with a map reduce I could use a gpu. The gpu also frees up the cpu to do other more complicated logic.