Originally posted by Chirone
i would probably say that mac vs pc is a plausible topic, however, you can't take a fanboy approach, if it were me i'd take a whole hci (human computer interaction) approach
and by that i mean looking at each operating system from all the hci principles (things like how easy it is to use the interface)..........................
..............but yeah... i wouldn't say stwert's suggestions are completely off a plausible essay. you just have to take a realistic approach rather than a fanboy approach.
You certainly make a convincing argument! I'd still be worried they wouldn't see it as that academic. It would be fine in an interview but most universities don't interview and would just read my personal statement, in which I'd be lucky to have enough room for the title and while I could give it a title that would it wasn't the typical mac Vs PC war flame bait, I still think they would see the topic and jump to conclusions (or at least not think it sounds that impressive).
Originally posted by gster123
Yes, the intorduction to parallel processing sets the scene with history, discuss the process of "standard" parrallel processing, then go onto the GPU and its stream processing and limiting factors of uning this over other methods say genetic algorithms as they are limited in stream (if I remember correctly!).
The GPU is also limited in its instruction set over a CPU and therefore cannot "do" everyting a CPU can faster. There are lots of examples of advantages and disadvantages of the GPU for processing. In effect when it comes to a lot of stuff (encoding video, rendering etc) your taking advantage of its vector processing, thought this may not be to all applicaitions.
There are also power issues, not too sure of the difference (good to look up) is processing on the GPU watt/instruction more economical? Dont know the answer to this but worth a look.
Propose the idea and possibly package it as "Will the emergence of GPU processing mean the demise of the CPU" or something like that.
You may even get into giving CUDA a go, I did except I managed to make my screen black and white and could not get it back to colour untill I uninstalled it, even with a qualified quadro GFX card!
I would run the idea past the tutor, to get a feel for what they are after.
Cheers
Steve
To be honest, I think the tutor would just give me a blank look. He's not a computing/IT teacher (and my Computing teachers don't know/don't care about it).
I know it's marked by one of my teachers, but I'm not sure who. I better check to see if it's a computing teacher or not, because I might be in danger of getting too technical (although I do seem to remember there was at least the option to get it marked by a specific appropriate subject teacher).
The course is new (it's been done one year (but they haven't been marked and submitted yet)) so I'm not even sure the tutors know what the exam board expects.
But I think I'll probably do it about GPUs. It should be a good opener during interviews as well.
Last edited by elephantinc; 09-06-2010 at 11:22 PM.