From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Not to be confused with Graphics card . "GPU" redirects here. For other uses, see GPU (disambiguation) . A *graphics processing unit* (*GPU*), also occasionally called *visual processing unit* (*VPU*), is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display. GPUs are used in embedded systems , mobile phones , personal computers , workstations , and game consoles . Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing , and their highly parallel structure makes them more effective than general-purpose CPUs for algorithms where processing of large blocks of data is done in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card , or it can be on the motherboard or--in certain CPUs--on the CPU die . [1] The term GPU was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first 'GPU', or Graphics Processing Unit, a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping , and rendering engines that are capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term visual processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002. On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Rusty Ramser 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@lists.phxlinux.org [mailto: > plug-discuss-bounces@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 > 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 wrote: > > yeahhhh that's kinda what I figured from my duckduckgo search. > > > :-)~MIKE~(-: > > > > On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 2:36 PM, koder 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@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@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@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@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@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@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