What kind of data processing problems would CUDA help with?

Question

I've worked on many data matching problems and very often they boil down to quickly and in parallel running many implementations of CPU intensive algorithms such as Hamming / Edit distance. Is this the kind of thing that CUDA would be useful for?

What kinds of data processing problems have you solved with it? Is there really an uplift over the standard quad-core intel desktop?

Chris

Answer 1

I think you've answered your own question. In general, CUDA/OpenCL accelerates massively parallel operations. We've used CUDA to perform various DSP operations (FFT, FIR) and seen order-of-magnitude speedups. Order of magnitude speedups with a couple hundred dollars is a steal. While specialized CPU libraries like MKL and OpenMP have given us quite a speed increase, CUDA/OpenCL is much faster.

Check here for examples of a CUDA usage

Answer 2

For one, in SIGGRAPH '09 they showed a CUDA implementation of Vray for Maya. Real-time ray-tracing and preview quality at 20-fps with a $200 card? I think it helps greatly.