This book explores the hardware design of graphics processor units (GPUs). GPUs were initially introduced to enable real-time rendering with a focus on video games. Today GPUs are found everywhere from inside smartphones, laptops, datacenters, and all the way to supercomputers. Indeed, an analysis of the Apple A8 application processor shows that it devotes more die area to its integrated GPU than to central processor unit (CPU) cores [A8H]. The demand for ever more realistic graphics rendering was the initial driver of innovation for GPUs [Montrym and Moreton, 2005]. While graphics acceleration continues to be their primary purpose, GPUs increasingly support non-graphics computing. One prominent example of this receiving attention today is the growing use GPUs to develop and deploying machine learning systems [NVIDIA Corp., 2017]. Thus, the emphasis of this book is on features relevant to improving the performance and energy efficiency of non-graphics applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. University of British Columbia, Canada

   Tor M. Aamodt

2. Samsung Electronics, USA

   Wilson Wai Lun Fung

3. Purdue University, USA

   Timothy G. Rogers

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