Split-second data mapping
People generally associate graphic processing units (GPUs) with imaging processing. Developed for video games in the 1990s, modern GPUs are specialized circuits with thousands of small, efficient processing units, or “cores,” that work simultaneously to rapidly render graphics on screen. But for the better part of a decade, GPUs have also found general computing applications. Because of their incredible parallel-computing speeds and high-performance memory, GPUs are today used for advanced lab simulations and deep-learning programming, among other things. Now, Todd Mostak, a former researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is using GPUs to develop an analytic database and visualization platform called MapD, which is the fastest of its kind in the world, according to Mostak. MapD is essentially a form of a commonly used database-management system that’s modified to run on GPUs instead of the central processing units (CPUs) that power most traditional database-management systems. By doing so, MapD...