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GPU
,→Architectures and Physical Hardware
= Architectures and Physical Hardware =
Each generation, the manufacturers create a series of cards, with set vRAM and SIMD Cores. The market is split into three categories: server, professional, and consumer. Consumer cards are cheapest and are primarily targeted for the video game market. Professional cards have better driver support for 3d programslike autocad. Finally, server cards provide virtualization services, allowing cloud companies to virtually split their cards between customers.
While server and professional cards have more vRAM, consumer cards are best more than adequate starting points for starting GPU programmingProgrammers.
GPUs use high-bandwidth RAM, such as GDDR6 or HBM2. These specialized RAM are designed for the extremely parallel nature of GPUs, and can provide 200GBps to 1000GBps throughput. In comparison: a typical DDR4 channel can provide 20GBps. A dual channel desktop will typically have under 50GBps bandwidth to DDR4 main memory.
