How general-purpose can a GPU be?
- Authors: Machanick, Philip
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61180 , vital:27988 , http://dx.doi.org/10.18489/sacj.v0i57.347
- Description: The use of graphics processing units (GPUs) in general-purpose computation (GPGPU) is a growing field. GPU instruction sets, while implementing a graphics pipeline, draw from a range of single instruction multiple datastream (SIMD) architectures characteristic of the heyday of supercomputers. Yet only one of these SIMD instruction sets has been of application on a wide enough range of problems to survive the era when the full range of supercomputer design variants was being explored: vector instructions. Supercomputers covered a range of exotic designs such as hypercubes and the Connection Machine (Fox, 1989). The latter is likely the source of the snide comment by Cray: it had thousands of relatively low-speed CPUs (Tucker & Robertson, 1988). Since Cray won, why are we not basing our ideas on his designs (Cray Inc., 2004), rather than those of the losers? The Top 500 supercomputer list is dominated by general-purpose CPUs, and nothing like the Connection Machine that headed the list in 1993 still exists.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Machanick, Philip
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61180 , vital:27988 , http://dx.doi.org/10.18489/sacj.v0i57.347
- Description: The use of graphics processing units (GPUs) in general-purpose computation (GPGPU) is a growing field. GPU instruction sets, while implementing a graphics pipeline, draw from a range of single instruction multiple datastream (SIMD) architectures characteristic of the heyday of supercomputers. Yet only one of these SIMD instruction sets has been of application on a wide enough range of problems to survive the era when the full range of supercomputer design variants was being explored: vector instructions. Supercomputers covered a range of exotic designs such as hypercubes and the Connection Machine (Fox, 1989). The latter is likely the source of the snide comment by Cray: it had thousands of relatively low-speed CPUs (Tucker & Robertson, 1988). Since Cray won, why are we not basing our ideas on his designs (Cray Inc., 2004), rather than those of the losers? The Top 500 supercomputer list is dominated by general-purpose CPUs, and nothing like the Connection Machine that headed the list in 1993 still exists.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
How General-Purpose can a GPU be?
- Authors: Machanick, Philip
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/439294 , vital:73563 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC181693
- Description: The use of graphics processing units (GPUs) in general-purpose computation (GPGPU) is a growing field. GPU instruction sets, while implementing a graphics pipeline, draw from a range of single instruction multiple data stream (SIMD) architectures characteristic of the heyday of supercomputers. Yet only one of these SIMD instruction sets has been of application on a wide enough range of problems to survive the era when the full range of supercomputer design variants was being explored: vector instructions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Machanick, Philip
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/439294 , vital:73563 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC181693
- Description: The use of graphics processing units (GPUs) in general-purpose computation (GPGPU) is a growing field. GPU instruction sets, while implementing a graphics pipeline, draw from a range of single instruction multiple data stream (SIMD) architectures characteristic of the heyday of supercomputers. Yet only one of these SIMD instruction sets has been of application on a wide enough range of problems to survive the era when the full range of supercomputer design variants was being explored: vector instructions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Mips2C: programming from the machine up
- Authors: Machanick, Philip
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/439226 , vital:73557 , https://homes.cs.ru.ac.za/philip/Courses/CS2-arch-C/Cs2MIPS2C.pdf
- Description: WHY THIS BOOK? Some years ago I took part in a panel discussion titled “Programming Early Considered Harmful” at the SIGCSE 2001 conference [Hitchner et al. 2001]. Once of those present was Yale Patt, whom I had met briefly on a sabbatical at University of Michigan, where he was at the time a professor working in computer architecture. His role on the panel was to proselytise his book, Introduction to Computing Systems: From bits and gates to C and beyond [Patt and Patel 2013], which introduced programming from the low level up. I found the idea intriguing particularly as I also was concerned with the problem that students tend to stick with the first thing they learn. If my concern was correct, it should be better to start with the programming model you want them to internalize, rather than start with machine level programming. Nonenetheless, I am always open to new ideas, and when the opportunity presented itself to run a computer organization course followed by a C course, I decided to try the idea for myself.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Machanick, Philip
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/439226 , vital:73557 , https://homes.cs.ru.ac.za/philip/Courses/CS2-arch-C/Cs2MIPS2C.pdf
- Description: WHY THIS BOOK? Some years ago I took part in a panel discussion titled “Programming Early Considered Harmful” at the SIGCSE 2001 conference [Hitchner et al. 2001]. Once of those present was Yale Patt, whom I had met briefly on a sabbatical at University of Michigan, where he was at the time a professor working in computer architecture. His role on the panel was to proselytise his book, Introduction to Computing Systems: From bits and gates to C and beyond [Patt and Patel 2013], which introduced programming from the low level up. I found the idea intriguing particularly as I also was concerned with the problem that students tend to stick with the first thing they learn. If my concern was correct, it should be better to start with the programming model you want them to internalize, rather than start with machine level programming. Nonenetheless, I am always open to new ideas, and when the opportunity presented itself to run a computer organization course followed by a C course, I decided to try the idea for myself.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
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