PyStream: Python Shaders Running on the GPU

Bray, Nicholas C.

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PyStream: Python Shaders Running on the GPU

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Title:	PyStream: Python Shaders Running on the GPU
Author(s):	Bray, Nicholas C.
Director of Research:	Hwu, Wen-Mei W.
Doctoral Committee Chair(s):	Hwu, Wen-Mei W.
Doctoral Committee Member(s):	Johnson, Ralph E.; Hart, John C.; Wah, Benjamin W.; Lumetta, Steven S.
Department / Program:	Electrical & Computer Eng
Discipline:	Electrical & Computer Engr
Degree Granting Institution:	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree:	Ph.D.
Genre:	Dissertation
Subject(s):	Python GPU Real-time Rendering Compiler Pointer Analysis
Abstract:	Abstract Graphics processing units (GPUs) have tremendous computing power, but are hard to program. Most GPU programming languages are extremely low level; no one has run a general-purpose high-level language on a GPU. This dissertation shows how to run Python shaders on a GPU for real-time rendering. Shaders written in Python run 30,000 - 300,000 times faster than on a CPU. This is partly because GPUs are designed to run shaders and partly because of the design of PyStream, a Python compiler for the GPU. PyStream advances the state-of-the-art in pointer analysis for Python, eliminates abstraction overhead for Python, maps a language with references onto an architecture that does not support references, and uses a single code base to program both the CPU and GPU. PyStream points the way for running high-level languages on specialized architectures.
Issue Date:	2010-08-20
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16886
Rights Information:	Copyright 2010 Nicholas C. Bray
Date Available in IDEALS:	2010-08-20
Date Deposited:	2010-08