The benefit of using the discrete element method (DEM) for simulations of fracture in heterogeneous media has been widely highlighted. However, modelling large st ructure leads to prohibitive computations times. We propose to use graphics processing units (GPUs) to reduce the computation time, taking advantage of the highly data paralle l nature of DEM computations. GPUs are massively parallel coprocessors increasingly popular to accelerate numerical simulations. We detail our algorithm and implementation of the DEM on GPU and present performance results for simulations of rock impact on a concrete slab, before to discuss the pro and cons of moving such computation to the GPU.