NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute for FY 2012 in Taiwan

Vrvilo Nicholas B, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds Nicholas Bradley Vrvilo of Rice University to conduct a research project, entitled "Preemptive work scheduling on a graphics processing unit," during the summer of 2012 at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan (ROC). The host scientist is Yang Chia-lin. The Intellectual Merit of the research project is manyfold. Targeting GPUs for preemptive work scheduling is a topic not extensively reported in the current literature. The concept of multiprogramming has traditionally focused on CPUs with a single thread of execution. By their parallel nature GPU architectures are already inherently multi-threaded, making them a less obvious target for multiprogramming. The complexities of memory management would also have hindered multiprogramming in the past, however, the additional memory options in the latest NVIDIA Fermi architecture allow for easier memory management in the GPU. These new features make it more feasible to suspend and resume computations without introducing an unacceptable amount of overhead because moving task data is not as complicated as it was with older GPU architectures. Broader Impacts of an EAPSI fellowship include providing the Fellow a first-hand research experience outside the U.S.; an introduction to the science, science policy, and scientific infrastructure of the respective location; and an orientation to the society, culture and language. These activities meet the NSF goal to educate for international collaborations early in the career of its scientists, engineers, and educators, thus ensuring a globally aware U.S. scientific workforce.