Nyami: a synthesizable GPU architectural model for general-purpose and graphics-specific workloads

Abstract

Graphics processing units (GPUs) continue to grow in popularity for general-purpose, highly parallel, high-throughput systems. This has forced GPU vendors to increase their focus on general purpose workloads, sometimes at the expense of the graphics-specific workloads. Using GPUs for general-purpose computation is a departure from the driving forces behind programmable GPUs that were focused on a narrow subset of graphics rendering operations. Rather than focus on purely graphics-related or general-purpose use, we have designed and modeled an architecture that optimizes for both simultaneously to efficiently handle all GPU workloads. In this paper, we present Nyami, a co-optimized GPU architecture and simulation model with an open-source implementation written in Verilog. This approach allows us to more easily explore the GPU design space in a synthesizable, cycle-precise, modular environment. An instruction-precise functional simulator is provided for co-simulation and verification. Overall, we assume a GPU may be used as a general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) or a graphics engine and account for this in the architecture's construction and in the options and modules selectable for synthesis and simulation. To demonstrate Nyami's viability as a GPU research platform, we exploit its flexibility and modularity to explore the impact of a set of architectural decisions. These include sensitivity to cache size and associativity, barrel and switch-on-stall multithreaded instruction scheduling, and software vs. hardware implementations of rasterization. Through these experiments, we gain insight into commonly accepted GPU architecture decisions, adapt the architecture accordingly, and give examples of the intended use as a GPU research tool.