Date: 06 Jun 2014 From: jyrki@di.ku.dk Subject: Master's thesis defence on parallel programming Oral defence of master's thesis: GPU programming made easier Defender: Jacob Jepsen Censor: Jesper Larsson Träff Supervisor: Jyrki Katajainen Time: Friday, 6 June 2014 at 13.15–15.15 Place: Lille auditorium, Universitetsparken 1 Abstract: We present a framework that aids the programmer in the development of GPU-executable code. We implement a catalogue of common optimizations specific to the GPU architecture. Through the framework, the programmer can semi-automatically apply the optimizations to a computationally-intensive code section and generate an equivalent GPU-executable code section. Based on our experiments, the generated code can be up to one order of magnitude faster than the code from equivalent frameworks and optimized CPU code, and it can attain close to 25\% of peak performance of the GPU. We also found that many of the transformations can be performed automatically, which makes our framework usable for both novices and experts in GPU programming. Finally, we contribute with our experiences in creating such frameworks. The thesis is available online at http://www.diku.dk/~jyrki/PE-lab/Jacob/ PE-lab's home page: http://www.diku.dk/~jyrki/PE-lab/