nacl_helper

Mon Mar 16 12:24:13 MST 2015

>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit#mw-head>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit#p-search>
Not to be confused with Graphics card
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_card>.
"GPU" redirects here. For other uses, see GPU (disambiguation)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPU_(disambiguation)>.

A *graphics processing unit* (*GPU*), also occasionally called *visual
processing unit* (*VPU*), is a specialized electronic circuit
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_circuit>designed to rapidly
manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame
buffer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_buffer> intended for output to a
display. GPUs are used in embedded systems
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_system>, mobile phones
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone>, personal computers
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer>, workstations
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workstation>, and game consoles
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_console>. Modern GPUs are very efficient
at manipulating computer graphics
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_graphics> and image processing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_processing>, and their highly parallel
structure makes them more effective than general-purpose CPUs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_processing_unit> for algorithms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm> where processing of large blocks
of data is done in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present
on a video card <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card>, or it can be on
the motherboard <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motherboard> or--in certain
CPUs--on the CPU die <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_(integrated_circuit)>.
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit#cite_note-1>

The term GPU was popularized by Nvidia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia> in
1999, who marketed the GeForce 256
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_256> as "the world's first 'GPU', or
Graphics Processing Unit, a single-chip processor with integrated transform,
lighting, triangle setup/clipping
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform,_clipping,_and_lighting>, and
rendering engines that are capable of processing a minimum of 10 million
polygons per second". Rival ATI Technologies
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies> coined the term visual
processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R300> in 2002.

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Rusty Ramser <rusty_ramser at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> What kind of system are you using, Mike?  Even if you don't have a desktop
> PC with a high-powered Nvidia or Radeon GPU card plugged into the
> motherboard, your system will have some type of GPU.  If you don't have an
> add-on card, it will probably be provided by a (usually weak) on-board
> Intel HD type of GPU.
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org [mailto:
> plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org] *On Behalf Of *Michael Havens
> *Sent:* Monday, March 16, 2015 12:14
> *To:* Mike Butash; Main PLUG discussion list
> *Subject:* Re: nacl_helper
>
>
>
> but I have no gpu (I don't think).
>
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Michael Butash <michael at butash.net>
> wrote:
>
> NaCL (salt, sodium chloride) is their GL helper for local gpu
> acceleration.  Youtube video acceleration, gaming stuff, anything that
> needs hardware-ish interactions use it.
>
> It shouldn't be spawning randomly, if it is, might want to figure out what
> is invoking it, could be bad as gpu's do things like bitcoin generation.
> Wouldn't surprise me some worm infects you and uses you to start computing
> hashes.
>
> I disable gpu acceleration under chrome|chromium, nothing good comes about
> with my ever leaving it on, oddly disabling it invokes bugs that break it
> more depending on your version of chrome (see ulimit issues).
>
> -mb
>
>
>
>
> On 03/14/2015 02:51 PM, koder wrote:
>
> The difference seems to be whether or not you intended it to run.
> there is also some issue with nacl and nacl-helper that comes about with
> Google's development process. I did not understand the references.
>
> On 03/14/2015 02:47 PM, Michael Havens wrote:
>
> oh well, along as nothing nefarious is happening with my computer all is
> well. the hard drive stopped running a while ago so all it seems nothing
> bad is happening.
>
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> yeahhhh that's kinda what I figured from my duckduckgo search.
>
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 2:36 PM, koder <iscreamkid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> it seems to be a part of chromium
>
> HM
>
> On 03/14/2015 02:21 PM, Michael Havens wrote:
>
> I was sitting at my computer when my hard drive started to go crazy! So I
> opened a terminal and ran ps -e and all the processes appeared normal
> except there was one I had never seen. That one is nacl_helper. What is it?
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>

-- 
A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.phxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-discuss/attachments/20150316/4dc6335a/attachment.html>