Article | REF: H1013 V1

Fully programmable graphics processors (GPU)

Authors: Daniel ETIEMBLE, David DEFOUR

Publication date: November 10, 2018, Review date: January 5, 2021

You do not have access to this resource.
Click here to request your free trial access!

Already subscribed? Log in!


Français

2. General GPU operation

2.1 Principle

As their name suggests, GPUs are primarily designed to run the graphics pipeline. This involves the simultaneous processing of a large number of vertices and an even greater number of pixels. For example, real-time rendering requires the processing of billions of pixels per second. This implies massive, fine-grained data parallelism, with mostly the same processing on each pixel. This leads to an execution model that is fundamentally different from that of general-purpose processors (CPUs). Figure 6 shows the difference between the two models:

You do not have access to this resource.

Exclusive to subscribers. 97% yet to be discovered!

You do not have access to this resource.
Click here to request your free trial access!

Already subscribed? Log in!


The Ultimate Scientific and Technical Reference

A Comprehensive Knowledge Base, with over 1,200 authors and 100 scientific advisors
+ More than 10,000 articles and 1,000 how-to sheets, over 800 new or updated articles every year
From design to prototyping, right through to industrialization, the reference for securing the development of your industrial projects

This article is included in

Software technologies and System architectures

This offer includes:

Knowledge Base

Updated and enriched with articles validated by our scientific committees

Services

A set of exclusive tools to complement the resources

Practical Path

Operational and didactic, to guarantee the acquisition of transversal skills

Doc & Quiz

Interactive articles with quizzes, for constructive reading

Subscribe now!

Ongoing reading
General GPU operation