Chapter 29. Streaming Architectures and Technology Trends

John OwensUniversity of California, Davis

Modern technology allows the designers of today’s processors to incorporate enormous computation resources into their latest chips. The challenge for these architects is to translate the increase in capability to an increase in performance. The last decade of graphics processor development shows that GPU designers have succeeded spectacularly at this task. In this chapter, we analyze the technology and architectural trends that motivate the way GPUs are built today and what we might expect in the future.

Technology Trends

As computer users, we have become accustomed to each new generation of computer hardware running faster, with more capabilities—and ...

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