research-article

GPGPU Programming for CS Undergraduates: Which one is Superman?

Authors:

Grayson Fenwick,

Cindy NorrisAuthors Info & Claims

ACMSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Southeast Conference

Pages 2 - 9

https://doi.org/10.1145/3374135.3385268

Published: 25 May 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Over the past few decades, Central Processing Units (CPUs) have improved exponentially, often doubling performance on a year-by-year basis. Recently progress has slowed due to the limits imposed by energy and heat. At present, instead of increasing CPU performance, manufacturers have focused on improving system performance by increasing the number of CPUs (known as cores) on a single silicon chip. A single application can benefit from the additional cores by being threaded; multiple threads can execute on different cores in parallel. Another source of parallel execution is the Graphical Processing Unit. GPUs have been used for graphics for decades. In recent years, programming interfaces have been introduced that allow the GPU to solve a variety of data parallel problems, not just problems involving graphics. This use of the GPU is known as General Purpose computing for Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU).

This paper discusses the creation of a GPGPU programming course for undergraduates at Appalachian State University (App-State) and provides a brief introduction to using the NVIDIA CUDA API. In addition, the paper focuses on the final programming assignment in the course which solves an image classification problem. The programming assignment is simple enough that second year CS students are able to complete it and also allows for further exploration thus making it interesting for upper level students.

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Cited By

Plancher B(2024)Parallel Optimization for Robotics: An Undergraduate Introduction to GPU Parallel Programming and Numerical Optimization Research2024 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW)10.1109/IPDPSW63119.2024.00079(342-345)Online publication date: 27-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPSW63119.2024.00079
Gabb HNicolau APuri SShah MToppur RWatkinson NXu WZhang H(2021)Lightning Talks of EduHPC 20212021 IEEE/ACM Ninth Workshop on Education for High Performance Computing (EduHPC)10.1109/EduHPC54835.2021.00011(43-50)Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/EduHPC54835.2021.00011
Yang CWang WLi F(2021)Design and Implementation of the Intelligent Parking System for Large Communities2021 International Conference on Computer, Internet of Things and Control Engineering (CITCE)10.1109/CITCE54390.2021.00028(107-117)Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/CITCE54390.2021.00028

Index Terms

GPGPU Programming for CS Undergraduates: Which one is Superman?
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Parallel architectures
      1. Multicore architectures
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ACMSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Southeast Conference

April 2020

337 pages

ISBN:9781450371056

DOI:10.1145/3374135

Conference Chair:
Morris Chang,
Program Chair:
Dan Lo,
Publications Chair:
Eric Gamess

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 25 May 2020

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ACM SE '20: 2020 ACM Southeast Conference

April 2 - 4, 2020

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Cited By

Plancher B(2024)Parallel Optimization for Robotics: An Undergraduate Introduction to GPU Parallel Programming and Numerical Optimization Research2024 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW)10.1109/IPDPSW63119.2024.00079(342-345)Online publication date: 27-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPSW63119.2024.00079
Gabb HNicolau APuri SShah MToppur RWatkinson NXu WZhang H(2021)Lightning Talks of EduHPC 20212021 IEEE/ACM Ninth Workshop on Education for High Performance Computing (EduHPC)10.1109/EduHPC54835.2021.00011(43-50)Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/EduHPC54835.2021.00011
Yang CWang WLi F(2021)Design and Implementation of the Intelligent Parking System for Large Communities2021 International Conference on Computer, Internet of Things and Control Engineering (CITCE)10.1109/CITCE54390.2021.00028(107-117)Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/CITCE54390.2021.00028

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