Softshell: Dynamic scheduling on GPUs
Steinberger M, Kainz B, Kerbl B, Hauswiesner S, Kenzel M, Schmalstieg D (2012)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2012
Journal
Book Volume: 31
Article Number: 161
Journal Issue: 6
Abstract
In this paper we present Softshell, a novel execution model for devices composed of multiple processing cores operating in a single instruction, multiple data fashion, such as graphics processing units (GPUs). The Softshell model is intuitive and more flexible than the kernel-based adaption of the stream processing model, which is currently the dominant model for general purpose GPU computation. Using the Softshell model, algorithms with a relatively low local degree of parallelism can execute efficiently on massively parallel architectures. Softshell has the following distinct advantages: (1) work can be dynamically issued directly on the device, eliminating the need for synchronization with an external source, i.e., the CPU; (2) its three-tier dynamic scheduler supports arbitrary scheduling strategies, including dynamic priorities and real-time scheduling; and (3) the user can influence, pause, and cancel work already submitted for parallel execution. The Softshell processing model thus brings capabilities to GPU architectures that were previously only known from operating-system designs and reserved for CPU programming. As a proof of our claims, we present a publicly available implementation of the Softshell processing model realized on top of CUDA. The benchmarks of this implementation demonstrate that our processing model is easy to use and also performs substantially better than the state-of-the-art kernel-based processing model for problems that have been difficult to parallelize in the past. © 2012 ACM.
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Austria (AT)How to cite
APA:
Steinberger, M., Kainz, B., Kerbl, B., Hauswiesner, S., Kenzel, M., & Schmalstieg, D. (2012). Softshell: Dynamic scheduling on GPUs. Acm Transactions on Graphics, 31(6). https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2366145.2366180
MLA:
Steinberger, Markus, et al. "Softshell: Dynamic scheduling on GPUs." Acm Transactions on Graphics 31.6 (2012).
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