AI Glossary
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)
What is GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)?
Specialised hardware originally designed for rendering graphics, now the primary compute platform for training and running AI models. GPUs excel at the parallel matrix operations that neural network training requires. The availability and cost of GPU compute is one of the primary barriers to training large AI models independently.
Example in practice
A technology executive evaluating the true cost of building a proprietary AI model would factor in GPU rental costs — discovering that frontier model training requires thousands of A100 GPUs running for weeks, making cloud GPU procurement a major budget line item.
See also