My question belongs on the quartz-dev list, but while we're at it:
Can I tell Core Image to use the GPU from an application so the
user can choose depending on the quartz composition? My program
uses the CPU quite heavily for compressing and streaming to DV, so
I believe using the GPU would be faster in this case. Another
solution would be using the other CPU (when I learn to use
multithreading methods), but that obviously wouldn't do for the iMac.
You can tell CoreImage to use the GPU instead of the CPU one given
machine if you use CI directly, but not through Quartz Composer.