GPU Gems 2: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation

Chapter 35. GPU Program Optimization

Cliff WoolleyUniversity of Virginia

As GPU programmability has become more pervasive and GPU performance has become almost irresistibly appealing, increasing numbers of programmers have begun to recast applications of all sorts to make use of GPUs. But an interesting trend has appeared along the way: it seems that many programmers make the same performance mistakes in their GPU programs regardless of how much experience they have programming CPUs. The goal of this chapter is to help CPU programmers who are new to GPU programming avoid some of these common mistakes so that they gain the benefits of GPU performance without all the headaches of the GPU programmer’s learning curve.

Data-Parallel Computing

One of the ...