Accelerate password cracking not just graphics

By harnessing a $150 GPU - less powerful than the nVidia 8800 card - Elcomsoft says they can cracked in just three to five days. Less complex passwords can be retrieved in minutes, rather than hours or days.
It is the way a GPU processes data that provides the speed increase. NVidia spokesman Andrew Humber describes the process using the analogy of searching for words in a book. "A [normal computer processor] would read the book, starting at page 1 and finishing at page 500," he says. "A GPU would take the book, tear it into a 100,000 pieces, and read all of those pieces at the same time."