Small-Scale Reconfigurability for Improved Performance and Double-Precision in Graphics Hardware
International Journal of Electronics, 2007
International Workshop on Applied Reconfigurable Computing, 2006
Kevin Dale, Jeremy W. Sheaffer, Vinu Vijay Kumar, David P. Luebke, Greg Humphreys, Kevin Skadron
Abstract
We explore the application of Small-Scale Reconfigurability (SSR) to graphics hardware. SSR is an architectural technique wherein functionality common to multiple subunits is reused rather than replicated, yielding high-performance reconfigurable hardware with reduced area requirements (Vijay Kumar and Lach 2003). We show that SSR can be used effectively in programmable graphics architectures to allow double-precision computation without affecting the performance of singleprecision calculations and to increase fragment shader performance with a minimal impact on chip area.