Looking for documents about the GPU architecture [processor architectures] [google]
Q: I try to sources at graphics processor architectures available and I can not find anything. Im looking for a high technical level. Here (~ http://www.cs.ucr.edu/ bhuyan/cs162/LECTURE7a.pdf) is an article on the Itanium thats what Im looking for. Anyone know of sources? I did a little searching on Google and on EBSCOhost and are unable to find anything.
Re:Well, by definition anything beyond the classic 5 stage RISC pipeline is "super" pipelined
Re:Not all cpu's are "super" pipelined… The P4 is of course with upwards of 20 pipelines, but other cpu's have as few as 7.
Re:It's easier for CPUs. There are tons of papers on CPU architectures, and besides, they're much more mature and everyone knows how a basic(or even an advanced) CPU works, even down to the nitty gritty details. There just isn't that much variation between CPU architectures within the past decade or so. They're basically all superpipelined, superscalar, out of order and speculative. The differences are just in number of units and resources, various algorithms, etc. Of course, there are still trade secrets. Nobody but intel knows what kinda branch predictor they're using for example.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
I think the actual workings of GPUs are different enough and are probably trade secret, which is why you don't see them discussed in detail.I think this is the case. Probably only old architechtures have really detailed information on them. Plus, except for the pixel shaders, people don't program for the graphics cards at as a low a level as they do with CPUs so it's easier to keep this sort of info a secret.
Re:I was looking for the processor architecture. In my class we have thus far discussed the TI C6X000 series and the Itanium in detail, discussing things like functional units, registers, pipelining, software pipelining, etc. I was hoping that similar information on a GPU processor was available.
Re:I think the actual workings of GPUs are different enough and are probably trade secret, which is why you don't see them discussed in detail.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Personally, I'm wondering what the hell the Itanium (http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/family/) is doing in a discussion of GPUs.
- M4H
He gave an example of the type of paper he was looking for.
Re:Here is a site from one of the teams in my processor architecture class last semester:
Nvidia GeForce 6800/7800
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rs5ea/geforce/
If you want to know more about any CPUs, here are the other links from the class (my group was the AMD Opteron ()
Intel Pentium M
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~eeo5w/pentiumm/
AMD Opteron
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~avw6s/opteron.html
IBM POWER5
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~elc5d/cs451/
Intel Itanium 1/2
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ams3cf/itanium.htm
Tensilica Xtensa
http://xtensa.2uan.com/
Sony Cell
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mt2w/cell.html
Pentium 4
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~mc2zk/cs451/Pentium4.html
Re:Personally, I'm wondering what the hell the Itanium (http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/family/) is doing in a discussion of GPUs.
- M4H
Re:That's a good article. My partner and I decided to go with the latest SPARC because it is open source. We were unable to find enough technical papers on the architecture of any GPU's.
Re:You mean that article is of the format you want? Is there a particular GPU you're looking at?
I was able to pick up a pretty interesting paper on GeForce 6 architecture (http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~csse3001/lectures/GPU%2520architecture.pdf) (warning: large PDF) via a Google Scholar search for nvidia architecture (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=nvidia+architecture&btnG=Search). A more targeted search will yield better results.
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Tags: google, processor architectures