Compute for mobile devices: performance-focused hands-on tutorial

Abstract

For modern SoCs used in mobile devices, it is vital to focus on the processing efficiency through leveraging a heterogeneous potential of the architecture. In this tutorial, we offer a hands-on experience with existing APIs for accelerating compute-intensive portions of a mobile application. Specifically, as a first step we introduce the essentials of the most popular general Compute APIs available in the mobile domain, including RenderScript*, OpenCL*, GLES pixel and recently compute shaders (plus quick comparison to more vendor-specific APIs like CUDA* and Metal*). We continue with medium-complexity topics like example API-specific performance tricks in action. Finally, we touch advanced aspects like tools-assisted performance analysis. General focus is on the changes required for the typical user code to leverage good GPU acceleration.