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# How Much of a Data Science Workflow Can Run on a GPU Today? Part 1: Accelerating Data Preparation

**[Towards Data Science](https://daily.dev/sources/tds)** · 10 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

GPU acceleration is now practical for tabular data workflows in Python, not just deep learning. Using the NYC Yellow Taxi dataset (~9-10M rows), this post walks through three approaches: the native cuDF API (pandas-like GPU DataFrames), cudf.pandas (zero-code-change accelerator for existing pandas code), and the Polars GPU engine (pass engine='gpu' to collect()). All three support automatic CPU fallback for unsupported operations. Benchmarks show significant speedups for groupby aggregations, joins, and sorting on large datasets, while CPUs remain competitive for smaller data due to GPU transfer overhead. The Polars GPU engine also supports multi-GPU scaling via RayEngine.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://towardsdatascience.com/how-much-of-a-data-science-workflow-can-run-on-a-gpu-today-part-1-accelerating-data-preparation>

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Tags: [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#gpu](https://daily.dev/tags/gpu), [#pandas](https://daily.dev/tags/pandas), [#polars](https://daily.dev/tags/polars)

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