acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

Contributed articles

GPUfs: The Case For Operating System Services on GPUs


GPUfs, illustration

Credit: Kudryashka

Due to their impressive price/performance and performance/watt curves, GPUs have become the processor of choice for many types of intensively parallel computations, from data mining to molecular dynamics simulations.14 As GPUs have matured and acquired increasingly general-purpose processing capabilities, a richer and more powerful set of languages, tools, and computational algorithms have evolved to make use of GPU hardware. Unfortunately, GPU programming models are still almost entirely lacking in core system abstractions (such as files and network sockets) CPU programmers have taken for granted for decades. Today's GPU is capable of amazing computational feats when fed the right data and managed by application code on the host CPU but incapable of initiating basic system interactions for itself (such as reading an input file from a disk). Because core system abstractions are unavailable to GPU code, GPU programmers face many of the same challenges CPU application developers did a half-century ago, particularly the constant reimplementation of system abstractions (such as data movement and management operations).

Back to Top

Key Insights

ins01.gif

The time has come to provide GPU programs the useful system services CPU code already enjoys. This goal emerges from a broader trend toward integrating GPUs more cleanly with operating systems, as exemplified by work to support pipeline composition of GPU tasks16 and improve the operating system's management of GPU resources.4 Here, we focus on making core operating system abstractions available to GPU code and explain the lessons we learned building GPUfs,19,20 our prototype file system layer for GPU software.


 

No entries found

Log in to Read the Full Article

Sign In

Sign in using your ACM Web Account username and password to access premium content if you are an ACM member, Communications subscriber or Digital Library subscriber.

Need Access?

Please select one of the options below for access to premium content and features.

Create a Web Account

If you are already an ACM member, Communications subscriber, or Digital Library subscriber, please set up a web account to access premium content on this site.

Join the ACM

Become a member to take full advantage of ACM's outstanding computing information resources, networking opportunities, and other benefits.
  

Subscribe to Communications of the ACM Magazine

Get full access to 50+ years of CACM content and receive the print version of the magazine monthly.

Purchase the Article

Non-members can purchase this article or a copy of the magazine in which it appears.
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account