Would it be possible to use a GPU to process plugins in ardour. Just a random thought
GPUs are very capable processors. The data pipeline to/from them has a lot of latency. They would be useful for batch processing audio. They are not useful for realtime processing unless you’re willing to accept much more latency than most audio software users tend to be.
Would a intergrated graphics work faster
no.
It is possible that the AMD integrated graphics which support heterogeneous memory management would be faster (than a separate GPU card), as that would potentially allow the GPU cores to access data in the same memory space as the CPU without an extra memory copy. The software support isn’t really mature enough to use that yet, and given how long AMD has been talking about it, the rate of progress is slow enough I don’t expect it to be mature enough to use for another few years.
Given that though, I think you have to go back to the fundamentals of what problem are you trying to solve? This sounds like something you heard about and thought was cool, a solution looking for a problem rather than a way to fix an actual problem you have. Given the large increase in latency that using a GPU would involve you have to compare that solution against just increasing your buffer size by several integer multiples (e.g. change from 512 samples to 2048, 4096, 8192 etc.) and see if you are still low on DSP time. Any modern multicore multi-GHz processor should just be loafing along at 8192 samples period size unless you are trying something kind of screwy.
right, I guess its just fantasy at this point and not a real feature that is necessary