For me, this year, it was using GPUs for numerical computing. I know that has been growing for years, but it seems like this is the year when it finally explod

For me, this year, it was using GPUs for numerical computing. I know that has been growing for years, but it seems like this is the year when it finally exploded: I work for in geophysics and the AGU (American Geophysical Union) conference last month had dozens of papers on using GPUs. It's easier than it looks to get started - go to AMD or Nvidia and download their software, which includes demonstration code. Then hack the demos. I wrote a summary of the basic ideas used in OpenCL at http://acooke.org/cute/APractical0.html http://acooke.org/cute/APractical0.html (but there are also many more online).