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GPU
,→Hardware Model: added examples
A common scheme on GPUs with unified shader architecture is to run multiple threads in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_instruction,_multiple_threads SIMT] fashion and a multitude of SIMT waves on the same [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMD SIMD] unit to hide memory latencies. Multiple processing elements (GPU cores) are members of a SIMD unit, multiple SIMD units are coupled to a compute unit, with up to hundreds of compute units present on a discrete GPU. The actual SIMD units may have architecture dependent different numbers of cores (SIMD8, SIMD16, SIMD32), and different computation abilities - floating-point and/or integer with specific bit-width of the FPU/ALU and registers. There is a difference between a vector-processor with variable bit-width and SIMD units with fix bit-width cores. Different architecture white papers from different vendors leave room for speculation about the concrete underlying hardware implementation and the concrete classification as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn%27s_taxonomy hardware architecture]. Scalar units present in the compute unit perform special functions the SIMD units are not capable of and MMAC units (matrix-multiply-accumulate units) are used to speed up neural networks further.
===Hardware Examples===
Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi, CC2.0) <ref>[https://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/fermi_white_papers/NVIDIA_Fermi_Compute_Architecture_Whitepaper.pdf Fermi white paper from Nvidia]</ref><ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_%28microarchitecture%29 Fermi microarchitecture on Wikipedia]</ref><ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_500_series GeForce 500 series on Wikipedia]</ref>
* 512 cuda cores @1.544GHz
* 16 SMs - Streaming Multiprocessors (Compute Units)
* organized in 2x16 cuda cores per SM
* Warp size of 32 threads
AMD Radeon HD 7970 (GCN 1.0)<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Core_Next Graphics Core Next on Wikipedia]</ref><ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_HD_7000_series Radeon HD 7000 series on Wikipedia]</ref>
* 2048 stream cores @0.925GHz
* 32 Compute Units
* organized in 4xSIMD16/SIMT4 per Compute Unit
* Wavefront size of 64 Work-Items
=Programming Model=