InfoQ: Microsoft Research’s Accelerator: A Data-Parallel Library for .NET that Targets GPUs

Microsoft Research’s Accelerator Project exposes a .NET library for performing parallel data processing using a computer’s GPU.

Accelerator is a .NET 2.0 DLL that requires DirectX 9, included with Windows XP SP2, and a graphics card that supports Pixel Shader 2.0 or above. Graphics cards without hardware vertex processing, common on cheaper laptops, do not appear to work.

The GPU is often the most powerful processor on the bus, and it’s nice to see people using it for something other than animating pull-down menus now and again.