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BrookGPU: General Purpose Programming on GPUs
An anonymous reader writes "
BrookGPU is a compiler and runtime system that provides an easy, C-like programming environment (read: No GPU programming experience needed) for today's GPUs. A shader program running on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra achieves over 20 GFLOPS, roughly equivalent to a 10 GHz Pentium 4. Combine this with the increased memory bandwidth, 25.3 GB/sec peak compared to the Pentium 4's 5.96 GB/sec peak, and you've got a seriously fast compute engine but programming them has been a real pain. BrookGPU adds simple data parallel language additions to C which allow programmers to specify certain parts of their code to run on the GPU. The compiler and runtime takes care of the rest. Here is the Project Page and Sourceforge page."
but the link to the project page is correct.
Actually, since "graphics-related things" are all matrix operations, this would turn the GPU into a high-end vector (matrix) engine.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
You are assuming using the GPU technologies are possible in a CPU. Because something is applicable in one instance doesn't mean it is in all instances. Making some things efficient may take away from the efficiency of others, but in the case of such aa specialized chip, it may not matter.
:)
It may be ok to compare the speed of a GPU and a CPU if they are infact different. If a GPU was a CPU used with cheaper material, yeah, it would be unfair. But as life goes, they both have their merits.. so why not? A GPU is prolly best at some matrix math transforms.. or not.
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
Nope. Nothing appears on your screen until the contents of the area of memory known as the "frame buffer" are rewritten by a program (on either the GPU or CPU). The GPU can execute math code all day and you won't see the results unless it deliberately modifies the frame buffer.
...but I assume that in any advanced texturing/shading/bump mapping/other GFX function rendering, you apply all the different effects, and when you're done, specifically call that the frame is to be displayed on screen. (E.g. why your FPS != your monitor refresh rate)
I would assume that this program simply never calls the drawing function, but instead gets the results back from the GPU. The normal screen should be able to run in the meanwhile (I assume you can e.g. build a 3D environment while showing a 2D cutscreen), so I would think you can have a plain GUI, as long as it doesn't need to use anything advanced.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
www.gpgpu.org
Very cool. Vector/Graphics processors could one day overtake General processors. They are way more energy efficient too.
Because CPUs are limited to running instructions (for the most part) in serial. GPUs get to run a large number of instructions in parallel. As some above posts mentioned, a lot of the stuff the GPU can do is vector and matrix multiplication, therefore the GPU is really good at multiplying a lot of numbers times a lot of numbers at once. But in everyday life you aren't multiplying a bunch of number times a bunch of numbers at once, you are multiplying one number time another, then multiplying the result times a number, and so on. GPUs are built to a specific task, and at that task they are very fast, but outside that task they won't be able to compete with a real CPU. And on top of all of that I can buy 3 2.4Ghz P4s for the price of a Geforce FX5950.
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~kmorel/documents/fftgpu/
The FFT on a GPU
This page contains supplemental material for the following paper.
Moreland, K and Angel, E. "The FFT on a GPU." In SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Workshop on Graphics Hardware 2003 Proceedings, pp. 112-119, July 2003.
wait, if there is a technology that allows construction of GPU that is 3 times faster than the fastest CPUs, why Intel and AMD do not use this technology to build those 3times faster CPUs?
are you sure that you can compare the speed of GPU and CPU?
Well, yes and no. In the same way you can take a render farm and say that "this provides the equivalent of a 100GHz Pentium" Which might be true, for that specific task. You see it already between GPUs, compare Pentium, Xeon, Athlon XP and Athlon 64. Do you get one benchmark "X is 3% faster than Y"? No. Faster at some, slower at others. For a specific benchmark, the difference can be pretty big already among "general" processors.
A specialized processor like a GPU will show much greater variation. It might really shine on some, really suck on others. Which is why it's no good using a GPU as a CPU. Those numbers tell you that it can be much faster than the fastest CPU around. Or better yet, if you can make it run in parallell to the normal CPU, give you a total performance which may theoretically be about 13GHz (10 + 3), where 3 of those can be general-purpose operations. Or it may be a task the GPU runs like a dog, and isn't even worth the overhead.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Here is a Beyond3d link that has some opcode info. Look around their site for a NV30 vs R300 architecture document that has lots of great stuff. If you are looking for the best s/n ratio, Beyond3d is one of the best. All meat, little fanboyism.