Dymaxion

Abstract

Graphics processors (GPUs) have emerged as an important platform for general purpose computing. GPUs offer a large number of parallel cores and have access to high memory bandwidth; however, data structure layouts in GPU memory often lead to suboptimal performance for programs designed with a CPU memory interface---or no particular memory interface at all!---in mind. This implies that application performance is highly sensitive irregularity in memory access patterns. This issue is all the more important due to the growing disparity between core and DRAM clocks; memory interfaces have increasingly become bottlenecks in computer systems.