Other accelerators have popped up from time to time, even in the recent history of HPC, but it seems to me that the development of a really diverse partner ecosystem may be one of the things that could help GPUs stick around as part of the HPC solution space. With companies integrating GPU hardware into their solutions, and other companies developing tools to make the GPUs themselves easier to use, GPUs are starting to benefit from a real network effect.
And that makes PGI’s recent announcement a good move for both them and for GPU providers. The Portland Group is a long-time provider of compilers that focus on the HPC user community. In late June they announced that version 9.0 of their compiler suite has new capabilities — including a set of directive-based semantics that let developers maintain a single source tree — that enable HPC users to get at the power of GPUs without all the pain typically associated with GPU programming.
