Watching NVidia make this transition has been fascinating. The world changed when a guy wrote a log(n) sort in a graphics shader. GPU's were really dumb parallel processors that could only work w/ 4x4 matrices. Now they are much smarter general purpose parallel processors with languages and debugging tools. The GPU is not just for graphics anymore. When I read the orange book years ago, http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-R-Shading-Language-2nd/dp/03213..., I told my sister on Wall St. that NVidia would soon be competing in the same space as intel.