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A computer instruction describes an operation such as add or multiply X, while the operand (or operands, as there can be more than one) specify on which X to operate as well as the value of X. Additionally, in assembly language, an operand is a value (an argument) on which the instruction, named by mnemonic, operates.
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditionally handled by the central processing unit (CPU).
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. [1] A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an implementation of that ISA.
Single instruction, multiple data. Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy.SIMD can be internal (part of the hardware design) and it can be directly accessible through an instruction set architecture (ISA), but it should not be confused with an ISA.
Most of the built-in functions and operators, can operate both on scalars and vectors (up to 4 elements), for one or both operands. Common built-in functions that are provided and are commonly used for graphics purposes are: mix, smoothstep, normalize, inversesqrt, clamp, length, distance, dot, cross, reflect, refract and vector min and max.
This does not hold true for higher operators. For example, exponentiation is normally right-associative in mathematics, [1] but is implemented as left-associative in some computer applications like Excel. In programming languages where assignment is implemented as an operator, that operator is often right-associative.
Accelerates compute-intensive applications in conjunction with leveraging generic compiler support; Software-programmable solution for consumer electronics applications or functions not covered by dedicated hardware; Emerging data mining, feature extraction, image and video processing, and human-computer interaction applications
Typical applications are digital signal processing and graphics processing. Intel's first IA-32 SIMD effort was the MMX instruction set. MMX had two main problems: it re-used existing x87 floating-point registers making the CPUs unable to work on both floating-point and SIMD data at the same time, and it only worked on integers .