If SSD mass adoption will be the next revolution for the compute market, the next one could be an even bigger jump and will mark the use of GPU in raw processing. All GPU manufacturers, including Intel with its Larrabee project are on track for it. As usual, only the first tests will indicate if results are as high as expectation, but first results seem be more than impressive. It should at least massively improve image rendering as well as video display. Adobe perfectly understands it, and already announced that the next generation of its famous Creative Suite, and in particular Photoshop, will be coded to benefit from graphical and physical engines available from the GPU to speed up image rendering and editing. However, to translated this project into reality, it is not going to be easy as there is no unified and/or platform independent systems. In addition to support all acceleration potential from all GPU manufacturers, Adobe will have to integrate all available engine... as performance gain will not be the same from one GPU to another. One can fear that the gap between the PC and the Mac version becomes even bigger, as the current Mac version does not feature 64bits support, whereas the PC does… Currently, GPU manufacturers seem to favor only Windows compatibility and support. Not so much surprising when one look at what speed Apple release drivers updates for the GPU used in all Mac models, without mentioning that it is far from being optimized drivers in all cases… For sure, Apple will have to switch gear and either open Mac-dedicated GPU drivers development to third parties (mostly AMD and NVidia), and further invest resources to really deliver drivers which can really compete with their corresponding DirextX or PC version ; especially for the Pro market in which Apple hold several niches. It does not help to offer Pro users top notch and well designed photo and video rendering/editing applications if one can NOT benefit from improved GPU raw power coming along with better/faster graphic card generation. No one needs to buy a new Mac Pro to simply get faster 3D rendering, the eight available cores are already not used in most cases, but needs for optimized drivers and last generation top-notch GPUs are really high from Pro users as well as Prosumers.

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	www.hardmac.com/news/2008-05-26/#8309