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TechBrief Dynamic Parallelism in CUDA

Parallelism in CUDA

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Zachary James
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© © All Rights Reserved
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90 views

TechBrief Dynamic Parallelism in CUDA

Parallelism in CUDA

Uploaded by

Zachary James
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

DYNAMIC PARALLELISM IN CUDA

Dynamic Parallelism in CUDA is supported via an extension to the CUDA


programming model that enables a CUDA kernel to create and synchronize new nested
work. Basically, a child CUDA Kernel can be called from within a parent CUDA kernel
and then optionally synchronize on the completion of that child CUDA Kernel. The
parent CUDA kernel can consume the output produced from the child CUDA Kernel, all
without CPU involvement.

Example:

__global__ ChildKernel(void* data){


//Operate on data
}

__global__ ParentKernel(void *data){


ChildKernel<<<16, 1>>>(data);
}

// In Host Code
ParentKernel<<<256, 64>>(data);

Recursion is also supported, and a kernel may call itself:

__global__ RecursiveKernel(void* data){


if(continueRecursion == true)
RecursiveKernel<<<64, 16>>>(data);
}

The language interface and Device Runtime API available in CUDA C/C++ is a subset of
the CUDA Runtime API available on the Host. The syntax and semantics of the CUDA
Runtime API have been retained on the device in order to facilitate ease of code reuse for
routines that may run in either the Host or Dynamic Parallelism environments.

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Important benefits when new work is invoked within an executing GPU program
include removing the burden on the programmer to marshal and transfer the data on
which to operate. Additional parallelism can be exposed to the GPUs hardware
schedulers and load balancers dynamically, adapting in response to data-driven
decisions or workloads. Algorithms and programming patterns that had previously
required modifications to eliminate recursion, irregular loop structure, or other
constructs that do not fit a flat, single-level of parallelism can be more transparently
expressed.

The CUDA execution model is based on primitives of threads, thread blocks, and grids,
with kernel functions defining the operation of individual threads within a thread block
and grid. When a Kernel Function is invoked, the grid's properties are described by an
execution configuration, which has a special syntax in CUDA C. Dynamic parallelism
support in CUDA extends the ability to configure and launch grids, as well as wait for
the completion of grids, to threads that are themselves already running within a grid.

Parent and Child Grids


A thread that is part of an executing grid and which configures and launches a new grid
belongs to the Parent Grid and the grid created by the invocation is the Child Grid.

The invocation and completion of Child Grids is properly nested, meaning that the
Parent Grid is not considered complete until all Child Grids created by its threads have
completed. Even if the invoking threads do not explicitly synchronize on the Child Grids
launched, the runtime guarantees an implicit synchronization between the Parent and
Child.

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Copyright
2012 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.

www.nvidia.com

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