Synthesising graphics card programs from DSLs

Over the last five years, graphics cards have become a tempting target for scientific computing, thanks to unrivaled peak performance, often producing a runtime speed-up of x10 to x25 over comparable CPU solutions. However, this increase can be difficult to achieve, and doing so often requires a fun...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cartey, L, Lyngsoe, R, De Moor, O
Formato: Journal article
Publicado: 2012
Descripción
Sumario:Over the last five years, graphics cards have become a tempting target for scientific computing, thanks to unrivaled peak performance, often producing a runtime speed-up of x10 to x25 over comparable CPU solutions. However, this increase can be difficult to achieve, and doing so often requires a fundamental rethink. This is especially problematic in scientific computing, where experts do not want to learn yet another architecture. In this paper we develop a method for automatically parallelising recursive functions of the sort found in scientific papers. Using a static analysis of the function dependencies we identify sets - partitions - of independent elements, which we use to synthesise an effcient GPU implementation using polyhedral code generation techniques. We then augment our language with DSL extensions to support a wider variety of applications, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this with three case studies, showing significant performance improvement over equivalent CPU methods, and similar effciency to hand-Tuned GPU implementations. © 2012 ACM.