Massively parallel GPUs are now being used in a great variety of market segments, ranging from video-games, to user interfaces, and to HPC. There are several signs, however, that computer and consumer technology industries are faced with major challenges in delivering improved performance and innovation for future entertainment devices. First, game developers have argued that while GPUs are increasing in performance, this is not leading to visual quality improvements because GPUs fundamentally restrict their flexibility. Second, there are signs that GPUs are approaching a “power wall”, and architecture innovation is required now to circumvent this wall. Third, there is a lack of GPU tools available to compare multi-core processors (CPUs) to GPUs and to perform GPU program transformations to optimize for performance and power.
To address these challenges, this project brings together commercial tools, applications and GPU designers, with academic researchers to analyze real-world mass-market software on comparable graphics processor architectures. The project results will help the design of next-generation GPUs, games consoles, and mobile phones, and help software developers produce graphically innovative software in the future.
In particular, the project seeks to achieve power and bandwidth reductions of 2x or more on real-world software on next-generation GPUs, as well as GPU architecture designs that are capable of advanced real-time graphics techniques (such as radiosity and game AI) at power levels suitable for battery-powered devices.