editor's blog
Subscribe Now

Multicore with GPUs

We recently took a look at multicore software automation, and one of the efforts in play was the generation of so-called “recipes” for helping parallelize a program. The idea is that a tool from Vector Fabrics helps you decide how to parallelize a sequential program, and then you get a set of instructions that tell you how to transform your program into a parallel version.

Typically this is done by inserting pthread or OpenMP constructs. But Vector Fabrics recently announced a new twist – albeit one that’s in development, not yet in production. They’re working with Imagination Technologies to include their PowerVR GPUs – in particular, the SGX540 and SGX544MP2 – in a target platform and produce OpenCL recipes.

OpenCL (which stands for Open Computing Language) is a framework that allows writing programs that will execute on heterogeneous multicore platforms. In this case, the platform would have a GPU accelerator on it. OpenCL is typically invoked when there are GPUs in the mix; it’s an open-source, multi-platform equivalent to Nvidia’s proprietary CUDA (although Nvidia also supports OpenCL).

There are three elements involved in doing something like this. The first is modeling the GPU so that the tools can estimate performance of various parallel implementations. According to CEO Mike Beunder, that’s relatively mature. The other two are optimizing the implementations on a GPU and generating the recipes. Their work with Imagination Technologies should help with the optimization, as Mr. Beunder says they have a lot of optimization experience. And getting the recipes out should be complete around the end of the year, plus or minus.

More info in their press release

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Jun 12, 2025
We truly do live in a world that would have been considered to be a far-flung science fiction future only a few short decades ago...

featured paper

Shift Left with Calibre Pattern Matching: Trust in design practices but verify early and frequently

Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software

As integrated circuit (IC) designs become increasingly complex, early-stage verification is crucial to ensure productivity and quality in design processes. The "shift left" verification approach, enabled by Siemens’ Calibre nmPlatform, helps IC design teams to identify and resolve critical issues much earlier in the design cycle.

Click to read more

featured chalk talk

Simplifying Position Control with Advanced Stepper Motor Driver
In this episode of Chalk Talk, Jiri Keprda from STMicroelectronics and Amelia Dalton explore the benefits of the powerSTEP01 is a system-in-package from STMicroelectronics. They also examine how this solution can streamline overall position control architecture, the high level commands included in this solution and the variety of advanced diagnostics included in the powerSTEP01 system-in-package.
Jan 21, 2025
30,935 views