This seems a little sensationalist to me. The GPU is a general-purpose device optimized for highly parallel workloads. One could just as easily say that a tradi

This seems a little sensationalist to me. The GPU is a general-purpose device optimized for highly parallel workloads. One could just as easily say that a traditional CPU is a special-purpose device optimized for branch-heavy code at the expense of parallel throughput. The current state of GPUs is based on Nvidia's decision to focus on GPGPU instead of being a DirectX accelerator forever. They specifically decided to make the device more general-purpose than it needed to be at the time. Presumably they thought there was a chance to start another virtuous cycle for parallel computing. I don't think we are close to realizing the GPU's potential as a general-purpose device. Imagine the kind of software we will have when every phone has the equivalent of today's biggest desktop GPU inside it. The next revolutionary general-purpose device will probably feel like a niche product at first, just as the 3Dfx Voodoo did in 1996.