As you may have noticed, Taichi is still a work in progress and far from perfect. Actually, I plan to bring this project to you guys after a stable interface and comprehensive documentation are finished. I didn't plan to ``promote'' it today but for some reason it just gets some attention. I'm so surprised and my website taichi.graphics went down for the first time due to increased traffic. Thus I upgraded the server on GoDaddy...
About the Chinese name 太極, as noted in the FAQ section at http://taichi.graphics/misc/, I chose this word in the intersection of traditional Chinese (which is still used in some parts of China nowadays) and modern Japanese, since a significant part of Taichi was done during my internship at the University of Tokyo.
GPU support is absolutely meaningful, especially for the simulation part (like the snow and smoke). If I'm given more time (and access to GPUs) I would definitely try GPUs someday. For the rendering part, it's like CPUs are still widely used in the industry, though there are renderers with GPU support like LuxRender. Another consideration is that CPUs are more friendly to programmers and researchers for prototyping.
I'm recently doing a full-time internship at Microsoft Research Asia and have very limited time for this project. If you would like to contribute, that's truly appreciated.
Thank you again for your support and encouragement.