The CUDA Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to GPU Programming

Chapter 8. Streaming Multiprocessors

The streaming multiprocessors (SMs) are the part of the GPU that runs our CUDA kernels. Each SM contains the following.

• Thousands of registers that can be partitioned among threads of execution

• Several caches:

– Shared memory for fast data interchange between threads

– Constant cache for fast broadcast of reads from constant memory

– Texture cache to aggregate bandwidth from texture memory

– L1 cache to reduce latency to local or global memory

• Warp schedulers that can quickly switch contexts between threads and issue instructions to warps that are ready to execute

• Execution cores for integer and floating-point operations:

– Integer and single-precision floating point operations

– Double-precision floating ...