Open-source GPU from Binghamton University could shake up the industry

GPU's are fantastic tools for completing scientific computational work. They're effective at calculating math that's highly parallel, doing it far faster than any CPU could do alone. And now the GPU is going open-source with Binghamton University's new Nyami architecture that researchers have developed.

Timothy Miller and his colleagues have finally been able to test their open-source GPU design, called Nyami. It's essentially a GPGPU focused design that's borrowed a lot from Intel's Larrabee (Xeon Phi) while still being, at it's heart, a GPU.

This is the first open-source modifiable and synthesizable GPU made by anyone. The architecture has a measure of modularity so that any aspiring researcher or scientist can modify it to their hearts content, provided they have the expertise to do so, though. But really this is revolutionary because now software and hardware can reach a nexus and be developed with the help of the open-hardware community, which is a well supported community. The problem has always been getting an architecture started, which is a highly technical engineering problem. But now the first part is solved, and we might see some great scientific progress that could even spill over to consumer GPU's one day. Just keep in mind this isn't something you'll be playing Assassin's Creed Redundancy on.