These include a CPU (central processing unit), GPU (graphics processing unit), memory and other elements.

BBC: Samsung upgrades Texas mobile device chip factory

Imagination had previously been more successful at licensing graphics processing unit (GPU) designs.

BBC: Imagination challenges ARM with Mips takeover

The Cray XK7 system contains 18, 688 nodes, with each holding a 16-core AMD Opteron 6274 processor and an NVIDIA Tesla K20 graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerator.

ENGADGET: Cray's Jaguar supercomputer upgraded with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, renamed Titan

The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has been enhanced in a number of ways, principally to allow for easier use of the GPU for general purpose computing (GPGPU) such as physics simulation.

ENGADGET: Sony unveils its next game console, the PlayStation 4, arriving in holiday 2013

By contrast an Nvidia graphics processing unit, or GPU, renders graphics by simultaneously hashing out the same problem for multiple pixels: textures, lighting and smooth rendering of shapes flying across the screen.

FORBES: Shoot To Kill

The graphics processing unit (GPU) "has become a much more important processor in a system than it was just a few years ago, when everything was 2-D in nature, " says Sam Blackman, chief executive of Elemental Technologies, a company that builds video-processing software that runs on Nvidia's gear.

FORBES: Intel Grinds Toward Graphics