A Survey of General‐Purpose Computation on Graphics Hardware

TLDR

Graphics hardware’s performance gains and programmability improvements have made it a compelling platform for computationally demanding tasks across many domains. The report aims to describe, summarize, and analyze recent research on mapping general‑purpose computation to graphics hardware, targeting two distinct audiences. The authors discuss the technical motivations, hardware and software developments, mapping techniques, and survey recent application developments in GPGPU. The authors conclude that the discussed techniques will be generally useful for researchers developing next‑generation GPGPU algorithms and techniques.

Abstract

Abstract The rapid increase in the performance of graphics hardware, coupled with recent improvements in its programmability, have made graphics hardware a compelling platform for computationally demanding tasks in a wide variety of application domains. In this report, we describe, summarize, and analyze the latest research in mapping general‐purpose computation to graphics hardware. We begin with the technical motivations that underlie general‐purpose computation on graphics processors (GPGPU) and describe the hardware and software developments that have led to the recent interest in this field. We then aim the main body of this report at two separate audiences. First, we describe the techniques used in mapping general‐purpose computation to graphics hardware. We believe these techniques will be generally useful for researchers who plan to develop the next generation of GPGPU algorithms and techniques. Second, we survey and categorize the latest developments in general‐purpose application development on graphics hardware.