International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) Volume 4 Issue 1, December 2019 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470 @ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID – IJTSRD29647 | Volume – 4 | Issue – 1 | November-December 2019 Page 702 Graphics Processing Unit: An Introduction Matthew N. O. Sadiku, Adedamola A. Omotoso, Sarhan M. Musa Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, Texas ABSTRACT Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a processor (or electronic chip) for graphics. GPUs are massively parallel processors used widely used for 3D graphic and many non-graphic applications. As the demand for graphics applications increases, GPU has become indispensable. The use of GPUs has now matured to a point where there are countless industrial applications. This paper provides a brief introduction on GPUs, their properties, and their applications. KEYWORDS: graphics processing unit, GPU computing, visual processing unit, heterogeneous computer system How to cite this paper: Matthew N. O. Sadiku | Adedamola A. Omotoso | Sarhan M. Musa "Graphics Processing Unit: An Introduction" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-4 | Issue-1, December 2019, pp.702-704, URL: www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd29647.pdf Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by /4.0) INRODUCTION Recently, computer performance has increased tremendously due to the outstanding growth of the number of transistors. This growth has impacted the world of scientific computing with the arrival of graphics processing unit (GPU), which can perform graphical and non-graphical computations [1]. The introduction of GPU in recent years has opened a way to perform faster calculations than central processing unit (CPU). GPU is sometimes called visual processing unit (VPU). GPU is an ubiquitous, electronic chip which is mounted on a video card in every PC, laptop, desktop computer, and workstation. It is a programmable logic chip specialized for display functions. It is designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory. Architecturally, the CPU consists of only few cores with lots of cache memory that can handle a few software threads at a time. A GPU is composed of hundreds of cores that can handle thousands of threads simultaneously. A CPU consists of four to eight CPU cores, while the GPU consists of hundreds of cores. This massive parallel architecture gives the GPU its high compute performance. GPU may be regarded as a coprocessor to the CPU which has its own DRAM and runs many threads in parallel. The difference between CPU and GPU is shown in Figure 1 [2]. Figure 1 the difference between CPU and GPU [2]. The term GPU was popularized by NVIDIA Corporation in 1999 when the company introduced the first GPU. NVIDIA made GPU fully programmable for scientific applications and support higher-level languages such as FORTRAN, C and C++. NVIDIA's CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) platform introduced in 2007 has become the dominant proprietary framework [3]. Besides NVIDIA, other GPU vendors include Intel, ATI, Sony, and IBM. IJTSRD29647