The Linux Journal has a story detailing how non-gaming programmers can take advantage of the GPU to speed up their applications.
In his story, George Koharchik, said, “Now, even nongraphical products (like Matlab) are starting to take advantage of the number-crunching abilities of GPUs. You can do the same.”
Koharchik walks through Glutcam, a program he wrote, and shows how to use OpenGL shaders and Video4Linux 2 interface.