Along with the rapid development of personal computers, various applications in computer graphics, even real-time applications in middle or small scale such as those in virtual reality and computer simulation, are migrating from workstations to PCs. To a large extent no doubt, the migration comes from the innovation of graphics hardware. For many years, with the advancement of graphics processing unit (GPU) and the creation of its new feature of programmability, scientists begin to transfer some of the processing stages in the graphics output pipeline or some graphics algorithms from CPU to GPU. To our surprise, except from those applications in graphics itself, GPU finds its applications in general purpose computations in other fields, and it comes up as a hot topic for research in recent 2 - 3 years. In this paper, starting from a brief introduction to some historical events on graphics hardware development, a detail introduction and analysis will be given to the technique and the latest development of GPU for general purpose computations, in combination with our own practice. Finally, a discussion is given to probe into the development perspective of GPU in this regard.