Comparison of Technologies for General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units
Master of Science Thesis in Information Coding Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University, 2016 Comparison of Technologies for General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units Torbjörn Sörman Master of Science Thesis in Information Coding Comparison of Technologies for General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units Torbjörn Sörman LiTH-ISY-EX–16/4923–SE Supervisor: Robert Forchheimer isy, Linköpings universitet Åsa Detterfelt MindRoad AB Examiner: Ingemar Ragnemalm isy, Linköpings universitet Organisatorisk avdelning Department of Electrical Engineering Linköping University SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden Copyright © 2016 Torbjörn Sörman Abstract The computational capacity of graphics cards for general-purpose computing have progressed fast over the last decade. A major reason is computational heavy computer games, where standard of performance and high quality graphics con- stantly rise. Another reason is better suitable technologies for programming the graphics cards. Combined, the product is high raw performance devices and means to access that performance. This thesis investigates some of the current technologies for general-purpose computing on graphics processing units. Tech- nologies are primarily compared by means of benchmarking performance and secondarily by factors concerning programming and implementation. The choice of technology can have a large impact on performance. The benchmark applica- tion found the difference in execution time of the fastest technology, CUDA, com- pared to the slowest, OpenCL, to be twice a factor of two. The benchmark applica- tion also found out that the older technologies, OpenGL and DirectX, are compet- itive with CUDA and OpenCL in terms of resulting raw performance. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank Åsa Detterfelt for the opportunity to make this thesis work at MindRoad AB.
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