AMD aims for GPUs in mainstream servers starting 2012

"As GPU becomes more relevant, that's a better way of getting performance than [CPU] cores," Longoria said. However, there's no hard and fast rule because GPU-based computing may not always be the right tool unless applications are written in parallel, she said.

Graphics-intensive applications that involve face recognition, video and imaging will see improvement on servers with the help of GPUs, Longoria said. She couldn't comment on whether data-intensive applications like databases would see improvement with the help of GPUs.

GPU is the fastest way for servers performance to jump, said Dan Olds , principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. The combined CPU-GPU use is growing in high-performance computing environments, and will soon come to businesses that do a lot of graphics intensive and analytical tasks, he said.

"I'm glad they are addressing the market, but perhaps they should push ahead and develop the market more," Olds said. AMD is more of a spectator and not a major player like Nvidia, which is aggressively pushing its software and hardware for heterogenous computing, he said.

Nvidia is set to release its newest graphics processor based on the Fermi architecture with 512 cores.