BionicFX announced today a revolutionary technology for music production that turns NVIDIA video cards into audio effects processors. Audio Video Exchange (AVEX) converts digital audio into graphics data, and then performs effect calculations using the 3D architecture of the GPU. The latest video cards from NVIDIA are capable of more than 40 gigaflops of processing power compared to less than 6 gigaflops on Intel and AMD CPUs.

"This technology allows music hobbyists and professional artists to run studio quality audio effects at high sample rates on their desktop computer," he said. Cann's invention is purely software-based and is not capable substituting a sound chip. The approach exploits the video card 3D chip, which usually is idle when users are working with multi-track recording software. "It's a great resource to use as a coprocessor," Cann said. "AVEX is designed to reduce the CPU load by moving the processing to the video card for certain types of audio effects when making music." Cann said that the technology is purely targeted at music enthusiasts and at this time brings no advantages for applications such as gaming.