Constant Memory and Texture Memory in GPU

Question

How are constant memory and texture memory implemented in GPU? I know that device memory is off the streaming multiprocessors and is a DRAM. Shared memory is on-chip, and probably an SRAM.

I also read somewhere that parameters are passed to the kernel via constant memory (i.e., parameters to the kernel function are copied from the CPU to the GPU constant memory). Is this correct?

talonmies · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-28 15:50:54Z

5

Texture memory and constant memory are allocated in the off-chip memory used by global memory, but accessed via dedicated hardware. Both memories have their own cache space (quite small) and special features like 2D pre-fetching for 2D texture memory or broadcasting for the constant memory.

Kernel parameters are stored in constant memory in Fermi and Kepler GPUs, on older G80/90/200 GPUs they are stored in shared memory.

See the CUDA C Programming Guide for more details about the caches sizes and those special features.

edited Jun 28, 2012 at 15:50

talonmies

72.7k35 gold badges204 silver badges296 bronze badges

answered Jun 28, 2012 at 15:27

pQB

3,1374 gold badges25 silver badges51 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Constant Memory and Texture Memory in GPU

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related