GPU

What is a GPU?

A GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is an internal physical component of the computer (hardware) that is responsible for processing graphics data, such as image data and video data, which is then sent to the computer screen to be displayed.

GPUs are also called graphics cards or video cards.

GPUs come into two types: integrated GPUs and dedicated GPUs. An integrated GPU is built into your CPU, so your CPU is also a GPU. Not all CPUs come with integrated graphics. A dedicated GPU is a separate component that is installed in a PCIe slot in your motherboard. Dedicated GPUs are always more powerful than their contemporary integrated counterparts.

GPUs are designed to handle massive amounts of parallel data processing simultaneously so they can process all the pixels that are displayed on screen and all the vertexes that compose video-games' 3D models fast enough. This ability made GPUs become useful in other, non-graphical fields where lots of data needs to be processed in parallel, such as artificial intelligence and cryptography.

In particular, nowadays we have software like Stable Diffusion that anyone can download and run on their computer to generate images using AI, so long as they have a GPU that is powerful enough. This doesn't depend on the GPU because it's generating images, it depends on the GPU because it's doing AI.