How to use graphics card to run application

[spawn007]

Hi everyone! - Need your collective help.

I have been reading about people/companies using their graphics cards to run applications to crunch numbers. What I have not found was how the application accessed the cpu of the graphics card.

Can someone explain to me what is involved to grant access to the GPU. Can any console application be used? Is there a wrapper application involved or will the code be wrote specifically for the task? Any limitations for what application runs there?

Thanks
Rob

[gamebak]

well, for example, nvidia new video cards have a system called CUDA, you can use c++ like language to program them. Another way is via 3rd party frameworks, slower, but easy to use.

[Rubberman]

As gamebak said, if you have an nVidia device, you can use their CUDA libraries/API's to write software which will run on their hardware. You can use C or C++ to write the code. You can find out all about this stuff, and get documentation or the SDK's from the nVidia web site. Here is a link: Parallel Programming and Computing Platform | CUDA | NVIDIA