high performance computing on graphics processing units: hgpu.org

We discuss the mapping of elementary ray tracing operations—acceleration structure traversal and primitive intersection—onto wide SIMD/SIMT machines. Our focus is on NVIDIA GPUs, but some of the observations should be valid for other wide machines as well. While several fast GPU tracing methods have been published, very little is actually understood about their performance. Nobody […]

We introduce a meshless hierarchical representation for solving light transport problems. Precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) and finite elements require a discrete representation of illumination over the scene. Non-hierarchical approaches such as per-vertex values are simple to implement, but lead to long precomputation. Hierarchical bases like wavelets lead to dramatic acceleration, but in their basic form […]

In this paper, we describe transformation recipes, which provide a high-level interface to the code transformation and code generation capability of a compiler. These recipes can be generated by compiler decision algorithms or savvy software developers. This interface is part of an auto-tuning framework that explores a set of different implementations of the same computation […]

Recent increases in the programmability and performance of GPUs have led to a surge of interest in utilizing them for general-purpose computations. Tools such as NVIDIA’s Cuda allow programmers to use a C-like language to code algorithms for execution on the GPU. Unfortunately, parallel programs are prone to subtle correctness and performance bugs, and Cuda […]

Recent advances in experimental structure determination provide a wealth of structural data on huge macromolecular assemblies such as the ribosome or viral capsids, available in public databases. Further structural models arise from reconstructions using symmetry orders or fitting crystal structures into low-resolution maps obtained by electron-microscopy or small angle X-ray scattering experiments. Visual inspection of […]

Graphics processors are significantly faster than traditional processors, particularly for numerical code, and in recent years have become flexible enough to permit general-purpose use, rather than just graphics use. NVIDIA’s CUDA makes general-purpose graphics processor computing feasible, but it still requires significant programmer effort. My thesis is that array programming can be an effective way […]

In this article, we discuss how the fast multipole method (FMM) can be implemented on modern parallel computers, ranging from computer clusters to multicore processors and graphics cards (GPU). The FMM is a somewhat difficult application for parallel computing because of its tree structure and the fact that it requires many complex operations which are […]

The use of the GPU as a general purpose processor is becoming more popular and there are different approaches for this kind of programming. In this paper we present a comparison between different implementations of the OpenGL and CUDA approaches for solving our test case, a weighted Jacobi iteration with a structured matrix originating from […]

The paper compares three APIs for the implementation of cloth modelling on modern graphics processor units (GPU): OpenGL plus GLSL, NVIDIA CUDA and OpenCL. They are compared by programming features, platform and device portability, and performance for the purpose of dynamic cloth simulation. Results about performance are given and conclusions are drawn about use cases.

Performance of a treatment planning system is an essential factor in making sophisticated plans. The dose calculation is a major time-consuming process in planning operations. The standard algorithm for proton dose calculations is the pencil beam algorithm which produces relatively accurate results, but is time consuming. In order to shorten the computational time, we have […]

Algorithmic solutions can help reduce energy consumption in computing environs. Energy conservation is a major concern today. Federal programs provide incentives to save energy and promote the use of renewable energy resources. Individuals, companies, and organizations seek energyefficient products as the energy cost to run equipment has grown to be a major factor.

An indirect boundary element method (BEM) that uses the fast multipole method (FMM) was accelerated using graphics processing units (GPUs) to reduce the time required to calculate a three-dimensional electrostatic field. The BEM is designed to handle cubic voxel models and is specialized to consider square voxel walls as boundary surface elements. The FMM handles […]