How to use graphics memory as RAM?
Since graphics cards provide large amounts of RAM (0.5GiB to 2GiB) and API access to the GPU is not that difficult with [CUDA][1], [Stream][2] and more portable [OpenCL][3] I wondered if it is possible to use graphics memory as RAM. Grahics RAM might have a larger latency (from CPU) than _real_ RAM but its definitively faster than HDD so it could be optimal for caching.

Is it possible to access graphics memory directly or at least with a thin memory management layer with support for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA? If so, what the the preferred way to do this?

  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA
  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_FireStream#Software_Development_Kit
  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL
How to use graphics memory as RAM?
===

Since graphics cards provide large amounts of RAM (0.5GiB to 2GiB) and API access to the GPU is not that difficult with [CUDA][1], [Stream][2] and more portable [OpenCL][3] I wondered if it is possible to use graphics memory as RAM. Grahics RAM might have a larger latency (from CPU) than _real_ RAM but its definitively faster than HDD so it could be optimal for caching.

Is it possible to access graphics memory directly or at least with a thin memory management layer with support for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA? If so, what the the preferred way to do this?

  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA
  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_FireStream#Software_Development_Kit
  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL