GPUs have been used effectively in implementing graph algorithms. Graph algorithms are tremendously useful and show up all over computing.<p><a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4482" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4482</a><p><a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.220.1923&rep=rep1&type=pdf" rel="nofollow">http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.220...</a>
I think everyone knows that GPU can be used for visual graphics like gaming and drawing things on a page with webGL. I'm more interested in computational powers like how it's able to compute bitcoin hashes. Are there cases of GPUs being used in other non-graphical computational cases? Like a mongodb/mysql index search?
Here's a wikipedia link; maybe someone else will give a better description <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_computing_on_graphics_processing_units" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_computing_on_gr...</a>
I have heard of some sites using GPUs for generating dynamic images.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL</a>
Bioinformatics/Genomics have been beginning to use GPUs for their data processing, since there's vast amount of DNA data that can take a long time to get through.
I believe that GPUs are very good at video processing. Obviously they're also good for a lot of math-heavy tasks, like fluid simulation, light simulation, etc.