Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How GPUs Work

cs.virginia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 54 posts

Re: How GPUs Work

#2

Post by pkaye »

I wish there was a good book on GPU architecture and even micro-architecture. I just like reading about this stuff and how they work.

Re: How GPUs Work

#3

Post by oneofthose »

pkaye wrote: post #2

I wish there was a good book on GPU architecture and even micro-architecture. I just like reading about this stuff and how they work.

There is an excellent slide deck by Kayvon Fatahalian [0] that I consider to be the best high-level introduction into the topic (especially if you have a deeper understanding of how a CPU works). But I agree, more detailed insights would be great.

[0] http://s08.idav.ucdavis.edu/fatahalian-gpu-architecture.pdf

Re: How GPUs Work

#4

Post by yan »

If anyone is even marginally interested in GPU internals, you'd do yourself a favor by checking out John Owens' UC Davis class on the topic[1]. I once watched the first lecture just to fill an hour and ended up going through the entire course within the span of a week, following up with my own research later on. Superbly interesting.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/graphics-architecture-w...

or on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4A8BA1C3B38CFCA0

Re: How GPUs Work

#6

Post by yaantc »

pkaye wrote: post #2

I wish there was a good book on GPU architecture and even micro-architecture. I just like reading about this stuff and how they work.

The latest (5th) edition of "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" by Hennessy & Patterson covers GPU (among many other things). One chapter on data parallelism covers SIMD, vector processors and GPUs. Very good overall IMHO, but better check the content to see if it suits your expectations.

Re: How GPUs Work

#7

Post by ak217 »

This overview, while a great start, doesn't really dive into the details of how modern GPUs work. Since 2007, many of the limitations that held GPUs back from being general-purpose computers have been removed (by relentless efforts of NVIDIA and to a lesser extent ATI/AMD, spurred in large part by NVIDIA's traction in the supercomputing space, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28supercomputer%29). My go-to source for a lot of these developments is AnandTech (http://www.anandtech.com/tag/cuda) but I'm sure there are plenty of other resources others can point to.

Another fascinating bit is that NVIDIA and ATI/AMD have developed what are now the largest general-purpose processors in the world (over 5 billion transistors per chip and counting - available in consumer GPUs for under $300, as opposed to Intel's largest Xeons that top out at 4 billion and cost $2000+) but are being held back at the 28nm process because their fab partner (TSMC) is oversubcribed by smaller, higher demand ARM chips that go into phones.

Re: How GPUs Work

#9

Post by rgbrenner »

ak217 wrote: post #7

This overview, while a great start, doesn't really dive into the details of how modern GPUs work. Since 2007, many of the limitations that held GPUs back from being general-purpose computers have been removed (by relentless efforts of NVIDIA and to a lesser extent ATI/AMD, spurred in large part by NVIDIA's traction in the supercomputing space, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28supercomputer%29 ). My g…

> but are being held back at the 28nm process because their fab partner (TSMC) is oversubcribed by smaller, higher demand ARM chips that go into phones.

TSMC plans to begin 16nm finfet production early 2015.. although they're doing it so they can supply apple and keep up with samsung (who also supply apple and have plans for 14nm/16nm).

nvidia's parker is suppose to use finfet and they're a customer of TSMC.. but parker will be a 64-bit arm cpu for servers/mobile devices.

Post reply on HN