CUDA by Example: An Introduction to General-Purpose GPU Programming

Chapter 7 Texture Memory

When we looked at constant memory, we saw how exploiting special memory spaces under the right circumstances can dramatically accelerate applications. We also learned how to measure these performance gains in order to make informed decisions about performance choices. In this chapter, we will learn about how to allocate and use texture memory. Like constant memory, texture memory is another variety of read-only memory that can improve performance and reduce memory traffic when reads have certain access patterns. Although texture memory was originally designed for traditional graphics applications, it can also be used quite effectively in some GPU computing applications.

7.1 Chapter Objectives

Through the course of this ...