Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)

Compute Unified Device Architecture is a parallel computing architecture useful for the support of applications that require significant amounts of parallel processing. It's often attributed to the Nvidia company and abbreviated CUDA.

In a Compute Unified Device Architecture model, the execution of compute kernels relies on parallel processing and a virtual instruction set delivered by a multi-core processor, often a GPU.

The idea is that some tasks that are termed "extremely parallel" like rendering sophisticated 3D graphics require a multi-core approach. First, chip companies started creating quad-core models and other models that introduced simple parallel processing.