GPU
The chip that does thousands of simple calculations at once.
A GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) was invented to draw video game frames: millions of pixels that all need the same small calculation at the same time. Instead of a few powerful cores like a CPU, a GPU has thousands of small ones that work in parallel.
It turns out that training and running AI models is the same kind of problem. A neural network is mostly huge multiplications of number grids (matrices), and a GPU can do those much faster than a CPU.
That is why NVIDIA became one of the most valuable companies in the world, why data centers are full of GPUs, and why a modern AI model is measured in how many GPUs it took to train.
Keep in mind
- CPU: few fast cores, good at varied tasks. GPU: many simple cores, good at repeated math.
- AI training and inference run mostly on GPUs or similar chips (TPUs).
- GPU memory (VRAM) decides how big a model fits on one card.
