Multiple threads improve GPU performance

How modern GPUs work.

December 29, 2025

Jon Peddie

In 1999, GPUs entered the scene as simple SIMD machines with just a few pipelines, yet they introduced consumers to real parallel processing beyond graphics. Everything changed in November 2006, when Nvidia launched the G80-based GeForce 8800 GTX with CUDA. Nvidia reframed GPUs around SIMT, letting programmers think in thousands of threads instead of vectors. AMD followed in 2007 with R600 and its wavefront model. Together, these designs turned GPUs into practical general-purpose parallel processors. Multiple threads improve GPU performance. The first GPUs introduced in 1999 were (compared with today’s GPU) relatively simple devices with two or four pipelines. They

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Multiple threads improve GPU performance

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