CAT: Cellular Automata on Tensor cores

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Navarro, Cristóbal A., Quezada, Felipe A., Meneses, Enzo, Ferrada, Héctor, Hitschfeld, Nancy
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866929399108993024
author Navarro, Cristóbal A.
Quezada, Felipe A.
Meneses, Enzo
Ferrada, Héctor
Hitschfeld, Nancy
author_facet Navarro, Cristóbal A.
Quezada, Felipe A.
Meneses, Enzo
Ferrada, Héctor
Hitschfeld, Nancy
contents Cellular automata (CA) are simulation models that can produce complex emergent behaviors from simple local rules. Although state-of-the-art GPU solutions are already fast due to their data-parallel nature, their performance can rapidly degrade in CA with a large neighborhood radius. With the inclusion of tensor cores across the entire GPU ecosystem, interest has grown in finding ways to leverage these fast units outside the field of artificial intelligence, which was their original purpose. In this work, we present CAT, a GPU tensor core approach that can accelerate CA in which the cell transition function acts on a weighted summation of its neighborhood. CAT is evaluated theoretically, using an extended PRAM cost model, as well as empirically using the Larger Than Life (LTL) family of CA as case studies. The results confirm that the cost model is accurate, showing that CAT exhibits constant time throughout the entire radius range $1 \le r \le 16$, and its theoretical speedups agree with the empirical results. At low radius $r=1,2$, CAT is competitive and is only surpassed by the fastest state-of-the-art GPU solution. Starting from $r=3$, CAT progressively outperforms all other approaches, reaching speedups of up to $101\times$ over a GPU baseline and up to $\sim 14\times$ over the fastest state-of-the-art GPU approach. In terms of energy efficiency, CAT is competitive in the range $1 \le r \le 4$ and from $r \ge 5$ it is the most energy efficient approach. As for performance scaling across GPU architectures, CAT shows a promising trend that if continues for future generations, it would increase its performance at a higher rate than classical GPU solutions. The results obtained in this work put CAT as an attractive GPU approach for scientists that need to study emerging phenomena on CA with large neighborhood radius.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_17284
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CAT: Cellular Automata on Tensor cores
Navarro, Cristóbal A.
Quezada, Felipe A.
Meneses, Enzo
Ferrada, Héctor
Hitschfeld, Nancy
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Cellular automata (CA) are simulation models that can produce complex emergent behaviors from simple local rules. Although state-of-the-art GPU solutions are already fast due to their data-parallel nature, their performance can rapidly degrade in CA with a large neighborhood radius. With the inclusion of tensor cores across the entire GPU ecosystem, interest has grown in finding ways to leverage these fast units outside the field of artificial intelligence, which was their original purpose. In this work, we present CAT, a GPU tensor core approach that can accelerate CA in which the cell transition function acts on a weighted summation of its neighborhood. CAT is evaluated theoretically, using an extended PRAM cost model, as well as empirically using the Larger Than Life (LTL) family of CA as case studies. The results confirm that the cost model is accurate, showing that CAT exhibits constant time throughout the entire radius range $1 \le r \le 16$, and its theoretical speedups agree with the empirical results. At low radius $r=1,2$, CAT is competitive and is only surpassed by the fastest state-of-the-art GPU solution. Starting from $r=3$, CAT progressively outperforms all other approaches, reaching speedups of up to $101\times$ over a GPU baseline and up to $\sim 14\times$ over the fastest state-of-the-art GPU approach. In terms of energy efficiency, CAT is competitive in the range $1 \le r \le 4$ and from $r \ge 5$ it is the most energy efficient approach. As for performance scaling across GPU architectures, CAT shows a promising trend that if continues for future generations, it would increase its performance at a higher rate than classical GPU solutions. The results obtained in this work put CAT as an attractive GPU approach for scientists that need to study emerging phenomena on CA with large neighborhood radius.
title CAT: Cellular Automata on Tensor cores
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17284