GPU vs CPU Bake-off

Key Insight

Comparing matrix multiplications on a CPU using NumPy against a GPU using PyTorch highlights the trade-off between latency and throughput. The GPU leverages thousands of simpler cores executing under a SIMT model to achieve massive parallel speedups, whereas the CPU relies on a few fast cores optimized for quick single-threaded tasks. This head-to-head comparison shows exactly when the overhead of copying data to the GPU is justified by the scale of the workload.