computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, a compute kernel is a routine compiled for high throughput

accelerators Accelerator may refer to: In science and technology In computing *Download accelerator, or download manager, software dedicated to downloading *Hardware acceleration, the use of dedicated hardware to perform functions faster than a CPU ** Gr ...

(such as graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs) or field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)), separate from but used by a main program (typically running on a

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

). They are sometimes called compute shaders, sharing

execution unit In computer engineering, an execution unit (E-unit or EU) is a part of the central processing unit (CPU) that performs the operations and calculations as instructed by the computer program. It may have its own internal control sequence unit (not ...

s with

vertex shaders In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as '' shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of ...

and

pixel shaders In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as '' shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of ...

on GPUs, but are not limited to execution on one class of device, or graphics APIs.

Description

Compute kernels roughly correspond to inner loops when implementing algorithms in traditional languages (except there is no implied sequential operation), or to code passed to internal iterators. They may be specified by a separate

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

such as " OpenCL C" (managed by the

OpenCL OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-prog ...

API), as "compute

shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as '' shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of spec ...

s" written in a shading language (managed by a graphics API such as

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...

), or embedded directly in application code written in a high level language, as in the case of C++AMP.

Vector processing

This

programming paradigm Programming paradigms are a way to classify programming languages based on their features. Languages can be classified into multiple paradigms. Some paradigms are concerned mainly with implications for the execution model of the language, s ...

maps well to

vector processor In computing, a vector processor or array processor is a central processing unit (CPU) that implements an instruction set where its instructions are designed to operate efficiently and effectively on large one-dimensional arrays of data called ...

s: there is an assumption that each invocation of a kernel within a batch is independent, allowing for data parallel execution. However, atomic operations may sometimes be used for synchronization between elements (for interdependent work), in some scenarios. Individual invocations are given indices (in 1 or more dimensions) from which arbitrary addressing of buffer data may be performed (including scatter gather operations), so long as the non-overlapping assumption is respected.

Vulkan API

The Vulkan API provides the intermediate SPIR-V representation to describe ''both'' Graphical Shaders, and Compute Kernels, in a language independent and machine independent manner. The intention is to facilitate language evolution and provide a more natural ability to leverage GPU compute capabilities, in line with hardware developments such as

Unified Memory Architecture Unified may refer to: * The Unified, a wine symposium held in Sacramento, California, USA * ''Unified'', the official student newspaper of Canterbury Christ Church University , mottoeng = The truth shall set you free , estab ...

and Heterogeneous System Architecture. This allows closer cooperation between a CPU and GPU.

References

GPGPU Parallel computing {{Graphics Processing Unit

Description

Vector processing

Vulkan API

See also

References