Wait-free Programming for General Purpose Computations on Graphics Processors

The fact that graphics processors (GPUs) are today’s most powerful computational hardware for the dollar has motivated researchers to utilize the ubiquitous and powerful GPUs for general-purpose computing. Recent GPUs feature the single-program multiple-data (SPMD) multicore architecture instead of the single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD). However, unlike CPUs, GPUs devote their transistors mainly to data processing rather than data caching and flow control, and consequently most of the powerful GPUs with many cores do not support any synchronization mechanisms between their cores. This prevents GPUs from being deployed more widely for general-purpose computing. This paper aims at bridging the gap between the lack of synchronization mechanisms in recent GPU architectures and the need of synchronization mechanisms in parallel applications. Based on the intrinsic features of recent GPU architectures, we construct strong synchronization objects like wait-free and t-resilient read-m...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Phuong Hoai Ha, Philippas Tsigas, Otto J. Anshus
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, GPUs, IPPS 2008, Powerful Gpus, Synchronization Mechanisms