How GPUs Can Make the Most of Fossil Fuel Resources

GPUs have shrunk half a football field’s worth of computing power into less space than a ping pong table on their way to helping the oil industry reach a performance milestone – simulating and oil reservoir with a billion computational cells. They did it in a fraction of the time that CPUs require, while using  fewer computing resources and 10 percent of the power. Oil companies model underground reservoirs before they drill to figure out how to extract the most petroleum with the least financial and environmental risk. A billion-cell simulation is extremely challenging because of its complexity. “Few companies have done it, and no one has done it faster,” said Vincent Natoli, CEO of Stone Ridge Technology, maker of the ECHELON petroleum reservoir simulation software. Unlike competing products, the software runs all its calculations on GPUs.