# High-Performance MATLAB with GPU Acceleration

In this post, I will discuss techniques you can use to maximize the performance of your GPU-accelerated MATLAB® code. First I explain how to write MATLAB code which is inherently parallelizable. This technique, known as vectorization, benefits all your code whether or not it uses the GPU. Then I present a family of function wrappers—bsxfunpagefun, and arrayfun—that take advantage of GPU hardware, yet require no specialist parallel programming skills. The most advanced function, arrayfun, allows you to write your own custom kernels in the MATLAB language.

If these techniques do not provide the performance or flexibility you were after, you can still write custom CUDA code in C or C++ that you can run from MATLAB, as discussed in our earlier Parallel Forall posts on MATLAB CUDA Kernels and MEX functions.

All of the features described here are available out of the box with MATLAB and Parallel Computing Toolbox™.

## Mobile phone signal strength example

Throughout this post, I will use an example to help illustrate the techniques. A cellular phone network wants to map its coverage to help plan for new antenna installations. We imagine an idealized scenario with M = 25 cellphone masts, each H = 20 meters in height, evenly spaced on an undulating 10km x 10km terrain. Figure 1 shows what the map looks like.

On the GPU, in the following listing we define a number of variables including:

• map: An N x 3 height field in a 10km x 10km grid (N = 10,000);
• masts: An M x 3 array of antenna positions, at height H;
• AntennaDirection: A 3 x M array of vectors representing the orientation of each antenna.

# New Features in CUDA 7.5

Today I’m happy to announce that the CUDA Toolkit 7.5 Release Candidate is now available. The CUDA Toolkit 7.5 adds support for FP16 storage for up to 2x larger data sets and reduced memory bandwidth, cuSPARSE GEMVI routines, instruction-level profiling and more. Read on for full details.

## 16-bit Floating Point (FP16) Data

CUDA 7.5 expands support for 16-bit floating point (FP16) data storage and arithmetic, adding new `half` and `half2` datatypes and intrinsic functions for operating on them. 16-bit “half-precision” floating point types are useful in applications that can process larger datasets or gain performance by choosing to store and operate on lower-precision data. Some large neural network models, for example, may be constrained by available GPU memory; and some signal processing kernels (such as FFTs) are bound by memory bandwidth.

Many applications can benefit by storing data in half precision, and processing it in 32-bit (single) precision. At GTC 2015 in March, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that future Pascal architecture GPUs will include full support for such “mixed precision” computation, with FP16 (half) computation at higher throughput than FP32 (single) or FP64 (double) .

With CUDA 7.5, applications can benefit by storing up to 2x larger models in GPU memory. Applications that are bottlenecked by memory bandwidth may get up to 2x speedup. And applications on Tegra X1 GPUs bottlenecked by FP32 computation may benefit from 2x faster computation on `half2` data.

CUDA 7.5 provides 3 main FP16 features: Continue reading

# GPU Pro Tip: Fast Great-Circle Distance Calculation in CUDA C++

This post demonstrates the practical utility of CUDA’s `sinpi()` and `cospi()` functions in the context of distance calculations on earth. With the advent of location-aware and geospatial applications and geographical information systems (GIS), these distance computations have become commonplace.

Wikipedia defines a great circle as

A great circle, also known as an orthodrome or Riemannian circle, of a sphere is the intersection of the sphere and a plane which passes through the center point of the sphere.

For almost any pair of points on the surface of a sphere, the shortest (surface) distance between these points is the path along the great circle between them. If you have ever flown from Europe to the west coast of North America and wondered why you passed over Greenland, your flight most likely followed a great circle path in order to conserve fuel. Continue reading

# Accelerate .NET Applications with Alea GPU

Today software companies use frameworks such as .NET to target multiple platforms from desktops to mobile phones with a single code base to reduce costs by leveraging existing libraries and to cope with changing trends. While developers can easily write scalable parallel code for multi-core CPUs on .NET with libraries such as the task parallel library, they face a bigger challenge using GPUs to tackle compute intensive tasks. To accelerate .NET applications with GPUs, developers must write functions in CUDA C/C++ and write or generate code to interoperate between .NET and CUDA C/C++.

Alea GPU closes this gap by bringing GPU computing directly into the .NET ecosystem. With Alea GPU you can write GPU functions in any .NET language you like, compile with your standard .NET build tool and accelerate it with a GPU. Alea GPU offers a full implementation of all CUDA features, and code compiled with Alea GPU performs as well as equivalent CUDA C/C++ code.

## CUDA on .NET with Alea GPU

Alea GPU is a professional CUDA development stack for .NET and Mono built directly on top of the NVIDIA compiler toolchain. Alea GPU offers the following benefits:

• Easy to use
• Cross-platform
• Support for many existing GPU algorithms and libraries
• Debugging and profiling functionality
• JIT compilation and a compiler API for GPU scripting
• Future-oriented technology based on LLVM
• No compromise on performance

You can easily install Alea GPU as a Nuget package, as Figure 1 shows.

## Ease of Use

Alea GPU is easy to use for all kinds of parallel problems. Developers can write GPU code in any .NET language and use the full set of CUDA device functions provided by NVIDIA LibDevice, as well as CUDA device parallel intrinsic functions, such as thread synchrhonization, warp vote functions, warp shuffle functions, and atomic functions. Let’s consider a simple example which applies the same calculation to many data values. `SquareKernel` is a GPU kernel written in C# that accesses memory on the GPU.

```static void SquareKernel(deviceptr outputs,
deviceptr inputs, int n)
{
var start = blockIdx.x * blockDim.x + threadIdx.x;
var stride = gridDim.x * blockDim.x;
for (var i = start; i < n; i += stride)
{
outputs[i] = inputs[i] * inputs[i];
}
}```

# Deep Learning for Image Understanding in Planetary Science

I stumbled upon the above tweet by Leon Palafox, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the The University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and reached out to him to discuss his success with GPUs and share it with other developers interested in using deep learning for image processing.

We are working on developing a tool that can automatically identify various geological processes on the surface of Mars. Examples of geological processes include impact cratering and volcanic activity; however, these processes can generate landforms that look very similar, even though they form via vastly different mechanisms. For example, small impact craters and volcanic craters can be easily confused because they can both exhibit a prominent rim surrounding a central topographic depression.

Of particular interest to our research group is the automated mapping of volcanic rootless cones as Figure 2 shows. These landforms are generated by explosive interactions between lava and ground ice, and therefore mapping the global distribution of rootless cones on Mars would contribute to a better understanding of the distribution of near-surface water on the planet. However, to do this we must first develop algorithms that can correctly distinguish between landforms of similar appearance. This is a difficult task for planetary geologists, but we are already having great success by applying state-of-the-art artificial neural networks to data acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, which is onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) satellite.

# Parallel Direct Solvers with cuSOLVER: Batched QR

[Note: Lung Sheng Chien from NVIDIA also contributed to this post.]

A key bottleneck for most science and engineering simulations is the solution of sparse linear systems of equations, which can account for up to 95% of total simulation time. There are two types of solvers for these systems: iterative and direct solvers.  Iterative solvers are favored for the largest systems these days (see my earlier posts about AmgX), while direct solvers are useful for smaller systems because of their accuracy and robustness.

CUDA 7 expands the capabilities of GPU-accelerated numerical computing with cuSOLVER, a powerful new suite of direct linear system solvers.   These solvers provide highly accurate and robust solutions for smaller systems, and cuSOLVER offers a way of combining many small systems into a ‘batch’ and solving all of them in parallel, which is critical for the most complex simulations today.   Combustion models, bio-chemical models and advanced high-order finite-element models all benefit directly from this new capability.  Computer vision and object detection applications need to solve many least-squares problems, so they will also benefit from cuSOLVER.

Direct solvers rely on algebraic factorization of a matrix, which breaks a hard-to-solve matrix into two or more easy-to-solve factors, and a solver routine which uses the factors and a right hand side vector and solves them one at a time to give a highly accurate solution. Figure 1 shows an example of $LDL^T$ factorization of a dense matrix.   A solver for this factorization would first solve the transpose of L part, then apply the inverse of the D (diagonal) part in parallel, then solve again with L to arrive at the final answer. The benefit of direct solvers is that (unlike iterative solvers), they always find a solution (when the factors exist; more on this later) and once a factorization is found, solutions for many right-hand sides can be performed using the factors at a much lower cost per solution. Also, for small systems, direct solvers are typically faster than iterative methods because they only pass over the matrix once.

In this post I give an overview of cuSOLVER followed by an example of using batch QR factorization for solving many sparse systems in parallel. In a followup post I will cover other aspects of cuSOLVER, including dense system solvers and the cuSOLVER refactorization API.

# cuDNN v2: Higher Performance for Deep Learning on GPUs

The cuDNN library team is excited to announce the second version of cuDNN, NVIDIA’s library of GPU-accelerated primitives for deep neural networks (DNNs). We are proud that the cuDNN library has seen broad adoption by the deep learning research community and is now integrated into major deep learning toolkits such as CAFFE, Theano and Torch. While cuDNN was conceived with developers of deep learning toolkits and systems in mind, this release is all about features and performance for the deep learning practitioner. Before we get into those details though, let’s provide some context.

## Deep Learning for Big Data

Data science and machine learning have been growing rapidly in importance in recent years, along with the volume of “big data”. Machine learning provides techniques for developing systems that can automatically recognize, categorize, locate or filter the torrent of big data that flows endlessly into corporate servers (and our email inboxes). Deep neural networks (DNNs) have become an especially successful and popular technique, because DNNs are relatively straightforward to implement and scale well—the more data you throw at them the better they perform. Most importantly, DNNs are now established as the most accurate technique across a range of problems, including image classification, object detection, and text and speech recognition. In fact, research teams from Microsoft, Google and Baidu have recently shown DNNs that perform better on an image recognition task than a trained human observer!

Deep learning and machine learning have been popular topics on Parallel Forall recently, so here are some pointers to excellent recent posts for more information. The original cuDNN announcement post provides an introduction to machine learning, deep learning and cuDNN. There are excellent posts on using cuDNN with Caffe for computer vision, with Torch for natural language understanding, on how Baidu uses cuDNN for speech recognition, and on embedded deep learning on Jetson TK1. There is also a recent post about BIDMach, an accelerated framework for machine learning techniques that are not neural network-based (SVMs, K-means, linear regression and so on). Continue reading

# C++11 in CUDA: Variadic Templates

CUDA 7 adds C++11 feature support to nvcc, the CUDA C++ compiler. This means that you can use C++11 features not only in your host code compiled with `nvcc`, but also in device code. In my post “The Power of C++11 in CUDA 7” I covered some of the major new features of C++11, such as lambda functions, range-based for loops, and automatic type deduction (`auto`). In this post, I’ll cover variadic templates.

There are times when you need to write functions that take a variable number of arguments: variadic functions. To do this in a typesafe manner for polymorphic functions, you really need to take a variable number of types in a template. Before C++11, the only way to write variadic functions was with the ellipsis (`...`) syntax and the `va_*` facilities. These facilities did not enable type safety and can be difficult to use.

As an example, let’s say we want to abstract the launching of GPU kernels. In my case, I want to provide simpler launch semantics in the Hemi library. There are many cases where you don’t care to specify the number and size of thread blocks—you just want to run a kernel with “enough” threads to fully utilize the GPU, or to cover your data size. In that case we can let the library decide how to launch the kernel, simplifying our code. But to launch arbitrary kernels, we have to support arbitrary type signatures. Well, we can do that like this:

```template <typename... Arguments>
void cudaLaunch(const ExecutionPolicy &p,
void(*f)(Arguments...),
Arguments... args);
```

Here, `Arguments...` is a “type template parameter pack”. We can use it to refer to the type signature of our kernel function pointer `f`, and to the arguments of `cudaLaunch`. To do the same thing before C++11 (and CUDA 7) required providing multiple implementations of `cudaLaunch`, one for each number of arguments we wanted to support. That meant you had to limit the maximum number of arguments allowed, as well as the amount of code you had to maintain. In my experience this was prone to bugs. Here’s the implementation of `cudaLaunch`. Continue reading

# The Power of C++11 in CUDA 7

Today I’m excited to announce the official release of CUDA 7, the latest release of the popular CUDA Toolkit. Download the CUDA Toolkit version 7 now from CUDA Zone!

CUDA 7 has a huge number of improvements and new features, including C++11 support, the new cuSOLVER library, and support for Runtime Compilation. In a previous post I told you about the features of CUDA 7, so I won’t repeat myself here. Instead, I wanted to take a deeper look at C++11 support in device code.

CUDA 7 adds C++11 feature support to nvcc, the CUDA C++ compiler. This means that you can use C++11 features not only in your host code compiled with `nvcc`, but also in device code. New C++ language features include `auto`, lambda functions, variadic templates, `static_assert`, rvalue references, range-based for loops, and more. To enable C++11 support, pass the flag `--std=c++11` to `nvcc` (this option is not required for Microsoft Visual Studio).

In my earlier CUDA 7 feature overview post, I presented a small example to show some C++11 features. Let’s dive into a somewhat expanded example to show the power of C++11 for CUDA programmers. This example will proceed top-down, covering a couple of layers of abstraction that allow us to write concise, reusable C++ code for the GPU, all enabled by C++11. The complete example is available on Github.

Let’s say we have a very specific (albeit contrived) goal: count the number of characters from a certain set within a text. (In parallel, of course!) Here’s a simple CUDA C++11 kernel that abstracts the mechanics of this a bit.

```__global__
void xyzw_frequency(int *count, char *text, int n)
{
const char letters[] { 'x','y','z','w' };

count_if(count, text, n, [&](char c) {
for (const auto x : letters)
if (c == x) return true;
return false;
});
}
```

# 12 GTC 2015 Sessions Not to Miss

With one week to go until we all descend on GTC 2015, I’ve scoured through the list of Accelerated Computing sessions and put together 12 diverse “not to miss” talks you should add to your planner. This year, the conference is highlighting the revolution in Deep Learning that will affect every aspect of computing. GTC 2015 includes over 40 session categories, including deep learning and machine learning, scientific visualization, cloud computing, and HPC.

This is the place where scientists, programmers, researchers, and a
myriad of creative professionals convene to tap into the power of a GPU
for more than gaming. –Forbes

## Tuesday, March 17

### An Introduction to CUDA Programming (S5661)

1:00-2:20pm

This is the introductory tutorial intended for those new to CUDA and you will leave with the essential knowledge to start programming in CUDA – no experience is needed! For those that have prior CUDA experience, this is a great session to brush up on key concepts required for subsequent tutorials on CUDA optimization. The other tutorials in this session are: An Introduction to the GPU Memory ModelAsynchronous Operations and Dynamic Parallelism in CUDA and Essential CUDA Optimization Techniques.

### SMTool: A GPU based Satellite Image Analysis Tool (S5201)

2:00-2:25pm

Dilip Patlolla, R&D Engineer in the Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will demonstrate their advanced satellite image analytic tool referred as SMTool built on the CUDA platform to process city-scale sub-meter resolution satellite imagery to detect and discriminate man-made structures. Continue reading