Hierarchically characterizing CUDA program behavior

Abstract

CUDA has become a very popular programming paradigm in parallel computing area. However, very little work has been done for characterizing CUDA kernels. In this work, we measure the thread level performance, collect the basic block level characteristics, and glean the instruction level properties for about 35 programs from CUDA SDK, Parboil, and Rodinia benchmark suites. In addition, we define basic block vectors, synchronization vectors and thread similarity matrix to capture the characteristics of CUDA programs efficiently. We find that CUDA programs have some unique characteristics at each level compared to sequential programs.