Tag: GPGPU

GPGPU for Instruction-Set Simulation – Maybe, Maybe not

I just read a quite interesting article by Christian Pinto et al, “GPGPU-Accelerated Parallel and Fast Simulation of Thousand-core Platforms“, published at the CCGRID 2011 conference. It discusses some work in using a GPGPU to run simulations of massively parallel computers, using the parallelism of the GPU to speed the simulation. Intriguing concept, but the execution is not without its flaws and it is unclear at least from the paper just how well this generalizes, scales, or compares to parallel simulation on a general-purpose multicore machine.

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Photoshop Scalability and “-10% overhead”

I just finished reading the October 2010 issue of Communications of the ACM. It contained some very good articles on performance and parallel computing. In particular, I found the ACM Case Study on the parallelism of Photoshop a fascinating read. There was also the second part of Cary Millsap’s articles about “Thinking Clearly about Performance”.

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GPGPU – a new type of DSP?

My post on SiCS multicore, as well as the SiCS multicore day itself, put a renewed spotlight on the GPGPU phenomenon. I have been following this at a distance, since it does not feel very applicable to neither my job of running Simics, nor do I see such processors appear in any customer applications. Still, I think it is worth thinking about what a GPGPU really is, at a high level.

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