GPUs in DSP
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From: Rune Allnor on 18 Jun 2010 07:01 On 18 Jun, 03:25, HardySpicer <gyansor...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I heard somewhere that PC GPUs can be used to do say FFTs. They are > cheap and very powerful (though not that easy to prorgam). I have seen people come up with this 'brilliant' idea every couple of years for a couple of decades, already. The common factor is that people look exclusively at the number of FLOPS / gates / processing units, and forget that the GPUs are intensely tuned to highly specialized tasks. Which means that it easily takes at least as much work to re-formulate the generic task at hand to fit the special structure of the GPU pipeline (which might not be possible at all), as would be required doing the job with a generic FPU in the first place. Rune
From: glen herrmannsfeldt on 18 Jun 2010 08:06 Rune Allnor <allnor(a)tele.ntnu.no> wrote: > On 18 Jun, 03:25, HardySpicer <gyansor...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> I heard somewhere that PC GPUs can be used to do say FFTs. They are >> cheap and very powerful (though not that easy to prorgam). > I have seen people come up with this 'brilliant' idea > every couple of years for a couple of decades, already. > The common factor is that people look exclusively at the > number of FLOPS / gates / processing units, and forget that > the GPUs are intensely tuned to highly specialized tasks. Especially tasks that can be done using single precision floating point. > Which means that it easily takes at least as much work to > re-formulate the generic task at hand to fit the special > structure of the GPU pipeline (which might not be possible > at all), as would be required doing the job with a generic > FPU in the first place. Well, I believe that there are now compilers that speed up the process, though it still takes more work than normal programming. -- glen
From: Vladimir Vassilevsky on 18 Jun 2010 09:08 HardySpicer wrote: > On Jun 18, 4:02 pm, Vladimir Vassilevsky <nos...(a)nowhere.com> wrote: > >>HardySpicer wrote: >> >>>I heard somewhere that PC GPUs can be used to do say FFTs. They are >>>cheap and very powerful (though not that easy to prorgam). You can get >>>up to 1000 processors on a GPU so it could have all manner of >>>applications. However, the I/O would slow things down I expect unless >>>the CPU and GPU were on the same chip (lets say). Has anybody linked >>>GPUs with FPGA I/O? >> >>Hardy, can you do anything other then babbling nonsense? If you can, >>download a library for ATI or NVIDIA, compile it and see for youself. > > > That wasn't the question. Clearly English is not your first language > so I understand your confusion. > My question was, has anybody interfaced their own FPGA board with a > GPU so that I/O can be speeded up. > Don't bother answering Vlad if you just want to flame. Hardy, what do you know about FFT, GPU, FPGA ? Do you at least understand the difference between them? Have you ever made anything practical, or at least can you write a "hello world" program ? Why don't you try doing anything yourself, instead of casting utter nonsense ? VLV
From: fatalist on 18 Jun 2010 09:18 On Jun 17, 9:25 pm, HardySpicer <gyansor...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I heard somewhere that PC GPUs can be used to do say FFTs. They are > cheap and very powerful (though not that easy to prorgam). You can get > up to 1000 processors on a GPU so it could have all manner of > applications. However, the I/O would slow things down I expect unless > the CPU and GPU were on the same chip (lets say). Has anybody linked > GPUs with FPGA I/O? > > Hardy Why even bother with FPGAs ? GPUs are much cheaper (funded by millions of hard-core gamers who shell out big bucks to NVidia and AMD) and CUDA is rather well standardized and adopted programming framework with future path The only reason to use FPGA might be reducing latency to absolute minimum. As for data throughput I suspect GPU will beat FPGA hands down Of course, if your problem cannot be formulated as SIMD program to run same computational routine on many pieces of data at the same time there is no benefit in using massively-parallel GPUs at all
From: fatalist on 18 Jun 2010 09:32
On Jun 18, 7:01 am, Rune Allnor <all...(a)tele.ntnu.no> wrote: > On 18 Jun, 03:25, HardySpicer <gyansor...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > I heard somewhere that PC GPUs can be used to do say FFTs. They are > > cheap and very powerful (though not that easy to prorgam). > > I have seen people come up with this 'brilliant' idea > every couple of years for a couple of decades, already. > The common factor is that people look exclusively at the > number of FLOPS / gates / processing units, and forget that > the GPUs are intensely tuned to highly specialized tasks. > > Which means that it easily takes at least as much work to > re-formulate the generic task at hand to fit the special > structure of the GPU pipeline (which might not be possible > at all), as would be required doing the job with a generic > FPU in the first place. > > Rune You don't have to know anything about GPU architecture to do GPU computing nowadays Matlab + Jacket will get you started in no time (if you don't mind shelling out some bucks) http://www.accelereyes.com/ The only requirement is that your problem has to be formulated in SIMD fashion (e.g. doing multidimensional FFT) to see a benefit |