The latest milestone in GPU computing was AMD’s announcement of a Super-Computer based on GPUs at the CES in January 2009. It will be built of more than a thousand GPUs and will have a computing power of one petaflop.
An external GPU is a graphics processor located outside of the housing of the computer. External graphics processors are used with laptop computers, which lack a powerful graphics processor. On-board graphics chips are not powerful enough for graphically intensive tasks. Therefore, attaching a GPU to some notebook is desirable.
Most GPUs made since 1995 support YUV color space and hardware overlays, and many GPUs made since 2000 also support MPEG primitives. This process of hardware accelerated video decoding. Most recent graphics cards even decode high-definition video on the card, offloading the central processing unit.
Early GPUs used Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) interface to communicate with the motherboard of a computer, a type of slot which is still used today for simple motherboard add-ons such as extra audio-processing cards or USB ports. As graphics cards became more powerful and graphics applications more demanding, a faster kind of interface called Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) was created and then PCIe x16 (PCI Express 16-lane) after it, the current overall standard. In 2008 PCIe 2.0 was introduced, doubling the speed of PCIe 1.0 and still working with older PCI Express interfaces.
PCI graphics cards will only work in PCI slots; AGP will only work in AGP slots. PCIe graphics cards will not function in PCI slots and PCI graphics cards will not function in PCIe slots. However, PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards will work in PCI Express x16 1.0 motherboard slots and vice-versa.
Multi-GPU Systems are computers which use more than one GPU. Generally this is used in high-end home computers to accelerate computer games, but there is also the ability to have one GPU rendering normal game scenes and one GPU calculating physics. This is currently supported by nVidia’s GPUs only and called PhysX. ATi and Intel have developed their own physics engine named Havok.
The first attempts in Multi-GPU Systems were done by 3Dfx, which was bought by nVidia later. Their Voodoo video cards, which were 3D only accelerators, could be hooked up to a second Voodoo video card to gain more performance. This was called SLi. Theoretically the performance would double, practically it increased far less, depending on the video game, which is still a problem in today’s Multi-GPU Systems. Later, 3Dfx built more than one GPU on one video card. It’s latest video card, the Voodoo 6, was based on four GPUs, but it was never released. However there exist several engineering samples of the Voodoo 6, mostly owned by collectors.
After nVidia bought 3Dfx, Multi-GPU Systems were dead for several years until nVidia came up with this idea again in 2004. As nVidia had bought all technologies and market names from 3Dfx, too, they simply used the name SLi again. Today’s SLi works with up to three video cards, which is called 3-way-SLi. There were also attempts with four cards, but this failed due to limitations in the DirectX9 API. Today’s DirectX10 API however would support this.
Despite the video cards, a SLi compatible motherboard is needed to build a SLi-System. Such motherboards have several PEG Slots (the successor to AGP, based on PCI-Express Technology) for more than one video card.
nVidia offers various Multi-GPU video cards, where two GPUs are built on one video card. These are often called Dual-GPU video cards and do not need a SLi compatible motherboard.
ATi’s Multi-GPU Technology is called Cross Fire. It works quite the same way, though there are fewer limitations for video card combinations. CrossFire was renamed as CrossFire X in 2007 to represent the possibility to combine more than two cards. Today, it is possible to have a CrossFire X system based on four video cards or two Dual-GPU cards.
Just like with SLi, there is the necessity for a CrossFire compatible motherboard in order to build a CrossFire System. One Dual-GPU video card from ATi does not necessarily need such a Crossfire compatible motherboard, however for two of them, it is needed.
1970 Atlantic hurricane season
The 1970 Atlantic hurricane season was the period of time in 1970 that tropical cyclones formed in Atlantic Ocean. It officially began on June 1, 1970, and it ended on November 30, 1970. Strong storms of 1970 include Hurricane Celia, which killed 20 and caused severe damage. Also, Tropical Storm Dorothy killed 51 people, most in Martinique.
These are the names of the tropical cyclones that formed in the season:
These are the names set aside for 1970. Names that were not used are in .
After this season there was one name that got retired: Celia. In 1974, the name "Carmen" was used instead.
Orange Bowl
The Orange Bowl Game is an American college football bowl game at the Dolphin Stadium. It is played every year. It first started on January 1, 1935.
Gary Karr
Gary Karr (born 20 November 1941), is an American classical double bass virtuoso and teacher.
There were several double bass players in his family, but he did not meet them. He studied with several teachers. He went to the Juilliard School. In 1962 he became famous when he was a soloist in a nationally televised New York Philharmonic Young People's Concert, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. On that famous telecast, Karr performed "The Swan" from "Carnival of the Animals" by Camille Saint-Saëns.
Gary Karr has given performances in many parts of the world. He has published a number of books for learning to play the double bass. After 40 years as a concert artist he retired in 2001 to Victoria, British Columbia, where he lives with his dog Shin-Ju.
In 1967, Karr founded the International Society of Bassists (ISB), an organization which encourages the playing of the double bass all over the world. Every two years the ISB has a big international conference.
Olga Koussevitzky, widow of the conductor and double bass player Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) heard Karr play when he was young, and gave him the beautiful Amati double bass made in 1611 which her husband had played. Karr later gave this double bass to the ISB so that double bassists world-wide could play on it.
In 1984 the Karr Doublebass Foundation was established by Karr, which loans instruments to promising young double bassists to help them in their careers.
1996 Atlantic hurricane season
The 1996 Atlantic hurricane season officially began on June 1, 1996, and lasted until November 30, 1996. Tropical Cyclones can and have formed outside these dates but not in 1996, because Hurricane Marco ended on November 24. The 1996 Atlantic hurricane season was very active, but not as active as 1995, but it was more active then 1997.
Tropical Storm Arthur was the first tropical storm of the 1996 season. It started on June 17 in the Bahamas as Tropical Depression One. One became Tropical Storm Arthur late on June 19. Tropical Storm Arthur made landfall in Cape Lookout, North Carolina was a weak tropical storm. It moved to the east and went back into the Atlantic Ocean and died on June 21. Arthur killed no one and caused only $1 million in damage.
Hurricane Bertha was the first hurricane of the 1996 Atlantic hurricane season. It started on July 5 near the Cape Verde Islands. On that same day it became Tropical Storm Bertha. By July 7 it became a hurricane, during that day it struck Antigua, and Sint Maarten. Bertha moved along the edges of the islands in the Bahamas. Hurricane Bertha made landfall in North Carolina on July 12 as a category 2 hurricane. It quickly got weaker and died on July 14 as it entered Canada. Bertha killed 9 people and caused $335 million in damage.