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42

answers:

2

It seems apparent that each core of the GPU could allow for handling of a request, rather than one main processor (the system's CPU) handling all requests. On the surface, it seems like it is possible, perhaps with Templates in GPU + Redis database in GPU GDDR5?

Is it possible and worthwhile?

+2  A: 

How would the GPU access disks, databases, etc.?

Requests are usually short sharp processing snippets. You'd have to load each request off main memory, into GPU memory, do a computation and fire it back again. There's an overhead when transferring data from main memory to GPU memory. Therefore, it's only worth doing a GPU computation if the calculation is long enough and the problem is ammenable to parallel processing on a GPU.

In essence, GPUs are good at stream processing. Not for lots of small requests.

Eamorr
I am thinking to use only GPU memory without CPU, memory and motherboard. Hard disk is a question.
dynback.com
How can you use the GPU without first loading your data from main memory onto GPU memory by issuing instructions to your CPU? The AMD fusion architecture looks interesting. Do you know what stream processing is? That's what GPUs are good at crunching. Trust me, if web servers could be accelerated using GPUs, the Intel/AMD architects would have implemented it years ago. That said, I'm not ruling out certain calculations that one encounters on the web being amenable to GPU processing. The only calculations I've ever run on a GPU run for several minutes/hours. Microsecond requests won't work.
Eamorr
A: 

The previous answer is valid. There is also another ceveat regarding GPU's, the instruction set is smaller and data is processed in matrices. I.e. same operation applied to every element in a set. So you will need to be very clever in designing what this replicated operations are.

I take it you are considering a GPU HTTP server.

whatnick