The purpose of the GPU client is twofold: to take advantage of the high-performance capabilities of Stream Processing, and to help develop a simulation architecture that will become one of the dominant FAH computing paradigms as multi-processor GPUs become an industry standard over the next several years. High-performance clients enable us to run types of calculations that would be impractical on our standard architecture–calculations that enhance our scientific capabilities, and your scientific contributions, significantly.
High-performance clients often require more computing resources. GPU clients typically run on dedicated systems, 24 hours a day, and use more processing power, more disk space, more network resources, more system memory, etc. Also, a major part of the scientific benefit is dependent on rapid turnaround of work units; hence we assign short deadlines for GPU work units. To reward those contributors for donating resources beyond the typical CPU client, for completing these work units very quickly within the short deadlines, and for contributing to the development of our next-generation capabilities, we currently set a benchmark value proportional to these demanding GPU work units. Without the GPU clients and your additional contributions, we would not be able to complete many important projects.