nVidia Tesla
nVidia TeslaSure, you know GPUs, but have you heard of GPGPUs? The concept is simple: Use the massively parallel architecture of the graphics processor for general-purpose computing tasks. Because of that parallelism, ordinary calculations can be dramatically sped up. To create the Tesla, its powerful new entry into this market, nVidia has bundled multiple GPUs (without video connectors!) into either a board or a desk-side box that offers near-supercomputer levels of single-precision floating-point operations. The general-purpose GPU (thus the acronym GPGPU) is being used as a high-performance coprocessor for climate modeling, oil and gas exploration, and other applications—and it's much cheaper than a supercomputer. The Tesla even comes complete with its own C compiler and tools.

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