How can I use the GPU as a second processor in .Net?

Question

The question says it all really. I'm hoping that I don't have to write the code in a c++ .dll and then call it from managed code.

Answer 1

With a quick googling, I found this called Accelerator. Its a Microsoft Research project found here.

Answer 2

You can write code for the GPU only using a shading language. All of the shading languages are proper languages (it's not C++, .NET languages or anything else) on their own but they are very similar to C++.

Most common shading languages are:

• GLSL (for OpenGL)

• Cg (the nVidia shading language compatible with both directX and OpenGL)

• HLSL (microsoft shading language for directX).

You need to write the code you want to run on the GPU in your shading language then dynamically compile and download to the GPU. The code you use to dynamically compile and download is usually any code that supports directX/OpenGL stuff (there's Java, .NET and C++ APIs as far as I know - most people uses C++ though so most of the samples you'll find will be written in C++).