Introduction to Parallel Programming with CUDA

The purpose of this module is for students to understand how the course will be run, topics, how they will be assessed, and expectations.

The single most important concept for using GPUs to solve complex and large-scale problems, is management of threads. CUDA provides two- and three-dimensional logical abstractions of threads, blocks and grids. Students will develop programs that utilize threads, blocks, and grids to process large 2 to 3-dimensional data sets.

To manage the access and modification of data in physical memory effectively, students will need to load data into CPU (host) and GPU (global) general-purpose memory. Students will create software that allocates host memory and transfers it into global memory for use by threads. Students will also learn the capabilities and speeds of these types of memories.

To improve performance in GPU software, students will need to utilized mutable (shared) and static (constant) memory. They will use them to apply masks to all items of a data set, to manage the communication between threads, and use for caching in complex programs.