Why Machine Learning Needs GPUs

Last summer, I spent a week at a conference dedicated to graphics-processing units--GPUs. It was presented by GPU big name Nvidia, a brand that is largely associated with gaming hardware. At the conference, however, gaming was a sideshow. For that matter, graphics themselves (excluding VR) were a sideshow, despite being in the actual name. In general, this was a machine learning conference, and, to most of the attendees, of course it was. With chipmaker AMD's announcement this week at CES that the bleeding-edge of its GPU product line will be targeted at machine learning, at least initially, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a step back and offer a bit of background on why GPUs and machine learning are so intimately connected in the first place.