Cooperative group arrays

Abstract

A new level(s) of hierarchy—Cooperate Group Arrays (CGAs)—and an associated new hardware-based work distribution/execution model is described. A CGA is a grid of thread blocks (also referred to as cooperative thread arrays (CTAs)). CGAs provide co-scheduling, e.g., control over where CTAs are placed/executed in a processor (such as a GPU), relative to the memory required by an application and relative to each other. Hardware support for such CGAs guarantees concurrency and enables applications to see more data locality, reduced latency, and better synchronization between all the threads in tightly cooperating collections of CTAs programmably distributed across different (e.g., hierarchical) hardware domains or partitions.

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