Constructing a DIY GPU with Arduino

A GPU (graphics processing unit) is a specialised pc element for, primarily, rendering graphics. That RTX 5090 that you simply took out a second mortgage to purchase is one instance. However GPUs are helpful for way over simply taking part in the most recent video games at max settings; their parallel processing capabilities make them fascinating for different duties, like crunching information for machine studying. Jean Michel Sellier was in a position to construct one thing comparable utilizing microcontroller growth boards, together with an Arduino.

Technically talking, this isn’t actually a GPU. It doesn’t comprise devoted {hardware} for rendering shaders or something like that. Quite, it’s a parallel computing cluster that may distribute processing duties throughout a number of microcontrollers. However that’s a mouthful and so “GPU” is an effective sufficient simplification.

In complete, this cluster comprises 5 growth boards, every with its personal microcontroller. An Arduino Nano Each acts as the first controller, overseeing the processing duties distributed to the others. These are Teensy 4.0 boards. They’re all soldered on a perfboard with an OLED display to indicate the outcomes of the assigned computations. 

Sellier hasn’t but supplied many particulars on the code, besides that it was programmed principally in C. It takes some resource-intensive job, like computing digits of pi, and breaks it up between the 4 microcontrollers. It would even have the ability to deal with some gentle cryptocurrency mining — one other common use for GPUs. Sellier normally supplies in-depth explanations and tutorials, so make sure to subscribe to his channel for extra details about this DIY GPU.