The Supercomputer Hidden in Your Laptop
In this chapter we’re going to see how to leverage the supercomputer hidden in your laptop—the graphics processing unit or GPU. A modern GPU is a powerful data-parallel processor, capable of eclipsing the CPU when used for number-crunching, a practice that is commonly referred to as general-purpose computing on the GPU or GPGPU programming.
Over the years, a number of technologies have emerged to abstract away from the details of GPU implementation. We’ll be using the Open Computing Language, or OpenCL, to write GPGPU code.[48]
In day 1 we’ll see the basics of constructing an OpenCL kernel, together with the host program that compiles and executes it. In day 2 we’ll look at how a kernel is mapped onto ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access