[Beowulf] OT? GPU accelerators for finite difference time domain

[Richard Walsh]

Gerry Creager wrote:
>
> Richard Walsh wrote:
>> Mark Hahn wrote:
>>>> The next gen of hardware will support native double precision (AFAIK).
>>> my point is that there's native and there's native.  if the HW supports
>>> doubles, but they take 8x as long, then there's still a huge reason to
>>> make sure the program uses only low-precision.  and 8x (WAG, of course)
>>> may actually be enough so that a 4-core, full-rate SSE CPU to beats it
>> I would be surprised if they "faked" double precision is this way.  GPUs
>> are the widest thing
>> you can get in a processor.  My WAG is that they will provide true/fast
>> 64-bit (minus the same
>> IEEE 754 twiddles) by coalescing 32-bit ... reducing the floating point
>> width of a given
>> core by half, but still delivery lots of FLOPs.  Especially with the
>> G80, it makes to think of these
>> GPUs and multi-core SIMD processors.
>
> In discussions w/ Mike McCool of PeakStream at SC06, I think Mark is
> correct.  At this time, I believe they're stiull faking DP.  Look for
> hardware enhancements 3-4Q this calendar year.
Sorry ... Did not mean to suggest that true 64-bit was available in
hardware from
anyone >>today<<, only that when it comes (later this year) it will not
be "faked".
The graphics folks need it for better dynamic range in contrast and
brightness I
think.

rbw


-- 

--

Richard B. Walsh

Project Manager
Network Computing Services, Inc.
Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC)
rbw at ahpcrc.org  |  612.337.3467

>
>  "Making predictions is hard, especially about the future."
>
>   Nils Bohr

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