Shader Performance Analysis on a Modern GPU Architecture

This paper presents an analysis of the performance of the shader processing units in a modern Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) architecture using real graphic applications. The architecture of a modern GPU is described and a simulator and associated framework used to evaluate the architecture is introduced. The paper analyses the effects in performance of different configurations of the shader processing units and compares a classic GPU with a unified shader GPU. The evaluated unified shader architecture proves to be 15% to 30% more efficient, in terms of area, with a 2% to 7% improvement in performance when compared with a similar non-unified architecture.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: MICRO
• Authors: Victor Moya Del Barrio, Carlos González, Jordi Roca, Agustin Fernández, Roger Espasa
• Keywords: Hardware, MICRO 2005, Shader Processing Units, Unified Shader Architecture, Unified Shader Gpu