How GPU came to be used for general computation

Now I'd like to know more about what general uses there are to these beasts. I see the point for simulating fluidsn etc., but out of climate researchers and aerospace engineers, who needs these sort of tools nowadays? sincerely wondering.

This is a good introduction. I'm interested in finding articles that speculate about just how aligned the design requirements are between graphics, and most matrix-based scientific and data mining computation.<p>For instance, Nvidia has introduced double-precision support and L1 cache, which has marginal value in traditional graphics. This is going to hurt their profitability on the Fermi chip compared to the simpler ATI alternatives.<p>I am gonna enjoy watching how all this plays out.