AMD's Graphics Core Next Preview: AMD's New GPU, Architected For Compute
by Ryan Smith on December 21, 2011 9:38 PM ESTNot Just A New Architecture, But New Features Too
So far we’ve talked about Graphics Core Next as a new architecture, how that new architecture works, and what that new architecture does that Cayman and other VLIW architectures could not. But along with the new architecture GCN will bring with it a number of new compute features to further flesh out AMD’s GPU computing capabilities and to cement the GPU’s position as the CPU’s partner rather than a subservient peripheral.
In terms of base features the biggest change will be that GCN will implement the underlying features necessary to support C++ and other advanced languages. As a result GCN will be adding support for pointers, virtual functions, exception support, and even recursion. These underlying features mean that developers will not need to “step down” from higher languages to C to write code for the GPU, allowing them to more easily program for the GPU and CPU within the same application. For end-users the benefit won’t be immediate, but eventually it will allow for more complex and useful programs to be GPU accelerated.
Because the underlying feature set is evolving, the memory subsystem is also evolving to be able to service those features. The chief change here is that the hardware is being adapted to support an ISA that uses unified memory. This goes hand-in-hand with the earlier language features to allow programmers to write code to target both the CPU and the GPU, as programs (or rather compilers) can reference memory anywhere, without the need to explicitly copy memory from one device to the other before working on it. Now there’s still a significant performance impact when accessing off-GPU memory – particularly in the case of dGPUs where on-board memory is many times faster than system memory – so developers and compilers will still be copying data around to keep it close to the processor that’s going to use it, but this essentially becomes abstracted from developers.
Now what’s interesting is that the unified address space that will be used is the x86-64 address space. All instructions sent to a GCN GPU will be relative to the x86-64 address space, at which point the GPU will be responsible for doing address translation to local memory addresses. In fact GCN will even be incorporating an I/O Memory Mapping Unit (IOMMU) to provide this functionality; previously we’ve only seen IOMMUs used for sharing peripherals in a virtual machine environment. GCN will even be able to page fault half-way gracefully by properly stalling until the memory fetch completes. How this will work with the OS remains to be seen though, as the OS needs to be able to address the IOMMU. GCN may not be fully exploitable under Windows 7.
Finally on the memory side, AMD is adding proper ECC support to supplement their existing EDC (Error Detection & Correction) functionality, which is used to ensure the integrity of memory transmissions across the GDDR5 memory bus. Both the SRAM and VRAM memory can be ECC protected. For the SRAM this is a free operation, while for the VRAM there will be a performance overhead. We’re assuming that AMD will be using a virtual ECC scheme like NVIDIA, where ECC data is distributed across VRAM rather than using extra memory chips/controllers.
Elsewhere we’ve already mentioned FP64 support. All GCN GPUs will support FP64 in some form, making FP64 support a standard feature across the entire lineup. The actual FP64 performance is configurable – the architecture supports ½ rate FP64, but ¼ rate and 1/16 rate are also options. We expect AMD to take a page from NVIDIA here and configure lower-end consumer parts to use the slower rates since FP64 is not currently important for consumer uses.
Finally, for programmers some additional hardware changes have been made to improve debug support by allowing debugging tools to tap the GPU at additional points. The new ISA for GCN will already make debugging easier, but this will further that goal. As with other developer features this won’t directly impact end-users, but it will ultimately lead to better software sooner as the features and tools available for debugging GPU programs have been well behind the well-established tools used for debugging CPU programs.
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EJ257 - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
I can't believe it's been 6 years since the X360 and PS3 release. It seems like this latest generation of consoles stuck around a lot longer than previous versions did. Any speculations on what kind of hardware MS and Sony will throw into the next gen?DanNeely - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
They have. The big console makers, at the gave devs requests, were trying to make the current generation last a decade to allow more time to recover the work expended figuring out how to best program them. The motion capture cameras were supposed to be the thing that kept the platforms from getting too stale. I suspect however, that by planning to launch its new console early Nintendo may have blown those plans out of the water.jabber - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
I'm pretty sure the hardware specs for both the next Xbox and Playstation have been set in stone already.I'm still betting on a 2013 release too.
So right now GPU wise I reckon we're looking at GPUs currently sitting in the $100 range for both boxes. By 2013, the cost of these chips (suitably modified) will be down to $15 -$10 a box.
I wouldnt have thought anything higher than a 5770 or 450 would be suitable/required.
Targon - Monday, June 20, 2011 - link
It all depends on what you expect. Things feel a bit stagnant on the PC game front because consoles are not evolving, and too many companies want almost exactly the same experience on the PC version as what you have on the console.Stargrazer - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Something doesn't feel right here. In itself, SIMD is about *Data* Level Parallelism, not Thread Level Parallelism. Sure, you could use SIMD units as part of some larger scheme that exploits TLP, but that's not what *SIMD* is about.
Loki726 - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
If you use a strict definition of a SIMD programming model, then yes, you are probably right: SIMD is a single sequence of operations executed over multiple data elements.However, over time SIMD has been used to refer to both the aforementioned programming model and the hardware used to implement it. The hardware typically consists of a single control unit that broadcasts instructions to multiple functional units. When people say "a SIMD", they typically mean that hardware implementation rather than the computing model.
If that wasn't confusing enough, in the 1980s GPUs started using that SIMD hardware to execute multiple threads as long as the threads were all executing the same instruction at the same time.
So the statement about using "a SIMD" to exploit TLP is accurate, if you take "a SIMD" to mean a processor pipeline with a single control unit that broadcasts to multiple functional units, and have some scheme for scheduling threads onto functional units.
RedemptionAD - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
It seems like a good thing potentially. I hope that their good intentions are followed with good execution, at least better than Fermi.Targon - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
It should be interesting going forward. Now that AMD is finally into the 32nm process node, standalone GPUs also stand to gain quite a bit. As long as graphics don't become an afterthought to GPGPU, AMD should be in good shape. Radeon 7970(if that is the next generation GPU) may really be a game changer.Navier - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Will the GCN architecture be able to be virtualized? Can a VMWare/XEN/KVM/HyperV hypervisor create vGPUs accessible by VMs in much the same way as vCPUs are today? With GPUs being integrated within the CPU package it would be a waste of resources if it could not be virtualized.This will become a critical feature for enterprise computing beyond HPC applications. One example would be gaming in a cloud computing environment, where a company provides a service that runs a game on their compute and graphics hardware for a game and streams the output to your mobile device for you to enjoy.
hechacker1 - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Yeah I'm also curious about this. Perhaps with the IOMMU and other CPU like features that the GPU now has, it would be much easier to timeshare the GPU.