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ASK THE EXPERT
Doing business at the speed of sight Roy Thompson explains how the united power of the CPU and the GPU can garner greater benefits for businesses helping them maintain that important competitive edge.
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s far back as 4000 years ago when an early Emperor of the Xia Dynasty in China was fi rst credited with saying “a picture speaks a thousand words,” human beings have known the power of the visual arts. In fact, recent studies have shown that more than 80 percent of human comprehension is gained visually. Moreover, proving the early Xia emperor was right, the use of visual aids with oral presentations is understood to improve content retention levels by as much as six-anda-half times more than using words alone . As such, business has moved on from the basic PowerPoint presentation illustrations, jpeg and mpeg fi les, accompanied by basic presentation notes. The expectations of the end users of such applications have become so driven by the quality of the visual experience across multiple screens, interaction and capability, that organisations must increasingly ensure PC systems can accommodate growing visualisation requirements, and not just speeds and feeds or data-crunching abilities. Nowadays, graphics technology is evolving to meet bourgeoning requirements to create visually stunning computing experiences in a growing number of diverse business sectors and end-user groups. Whether it’s the rise of picture messaging or embedding richer multimedia assets in a webpage or presentation, the demand for more powerful PC graphics capabilities is unlikely to abate. Take, for example, the impact of the use of multiple monitors. Research has found that the increased viewing area provided by multiple monitors can help improve worker productivity by as much as 40 percent; simply not having to resize windows and spending less time managing the viewing space enables workers to concentrate better on the work at hand. Global research targeting SMBs, as well as enterprises, found 63 percent thought that today’s applications demanded the latest graphics performance. Meanwhile, 64 percent felt greater graphics capabilities were becoming necessary for optimal operating system (OS) performance, and 72 percent believed graphic capabilities on laptop or notebook PCs was a requirement that was increasing in importance. The challenge for many SMBs, which typically revolve around a two to three year refresh cycle of technol-
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23/09/2010 13:25