SCMS SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

VIDYA NAGAR,KARUKUTTY,COCHIN,KERALA

Seminar On Graphics Processing Unit

PRESENTED BY
AJMAL P.M S7 EC ROLL NO:1

WHAT IS A GPU ?

Microprocessor based system optimized for 2D/3D graphics, video, visual computing, and display. It form the heart of modern graphic cards, relieving cpu from graphics processing load. It provide real-time visual interaction with computed objects via graphics images, and video. Serves as

graphics processor parallel computing platform

GPU Evolution
NAME OF GPU Monochrome Display Adapters Hercules Graphics Card Colour Graphics Adapter FEATURES Text-Only 4-colour card 8-colour card

Video Graphics Array

256 colours,720 * 400(res)

VGA mode is the standard for graphics & minimum on all cards. In addition to including VGA, a graphics card must be able to be connected to the computer. Graphics cards are plugged in using Industry Standard Architecture(ISA) Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Accelerated Graphics Port(AGP) PCI Express

SLOTS ON MOTHER BOARD

PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT(PCI)

Intel introduced PCI standard in early 1990s PCI connects up to five external components. PCI bridge chip regulates the speed of the PCI bus independent of the CPU's speed. PCI gained attention when windows 95 supported a feature called Plug and Play(PnP). PnP any device or card can be inserted into pc , which is automatically recognized and configured to work.

The illustration above shows how the various buses connect to the CPU.

ACCELERATED GRAPHICS PORT (AGP)

For streaming video & real time rendered 3d games , output provided by PCI was not enough. In 1996 Intel introduced Accelerated Graphics Port(AGP), a modification of the PCI bus designed specifically to facilitate high performance graphics.

It provides high performance interconnect b/w core-logic chipset and the graphics controller.
Graphics bottleneck is avoided due to this interconnection.

AGP INTERFACE

Segments of system memory are dynamically reserved by the OS for use by the graphics controller. This memory is termed AGP memory . PCI EXPRESS

COMPONENTS OF GPU
There are several components on a typical graphics card: Graphics Processor The graphics processor is the brains of the card, and is typically one of the configurations: Graphics co-processor Handles all process without cpus assistance Found in high end video cards Graphics accelerator Handles all the process with cpus assistance Most commonly used configuration

Frame buffer Controls the memory on chip Sends information to Digital to analog convertor Memory Configuration varies with graphics card Most common Configuration Dual Port Memory Possible to read and write from different sections in same memory

Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) Also known as ramdac

Its takes data to be converted directly from memory

Computer (Bus) Connector It can be AGP or PCI EXPRESS This provides video card direct access to system memory

Heat Sink
It spreads out the heat produced by the GPU evenly throughout the heat sink and unit itself. They do this with fins and can usually be found on the graphics processor and the memory. Most heat sink has a fan mounted to cool the heat sink and the graphics processing unit. Not all cards have heat sinks, older cards did not produce as much heat, and many do not had a heat sink.

Display Connectors
Video In Video Out (VIVO) for S-Video (TV-out), Digital Visual Interface (DVI) for High-definition television (HDTV), and DB-15 for Video Graphics Array (VGA).

VGA Outputs(D-Sub) It is called D-Sub 15 and it conducts an analog display signal

Signal quality varies with products

DVI OUPUTS DVI is the standard digital output for graphics cards and flat panel displays. For models after the year 2004 D-Sub was replaced by DVI outputs.

S VIDEO
S-Video is an analog video standard used by the television industry. It provides a low resolution signal to televisions and at present it is not used.

ADVANTAGES Antialiasing

One of the major problems of computer graphics is that any curved or angular lines exhibit a lot of jaggedness
This jaggedness in 3D graphics is often referred to by gamers simply as 'jaggies', but the effect is formally known as Aliasing. It occurs because the image on our screen is only a pixellated sample of the original 3D information , the gpu has calculated. Antialiasing (AA), is used by gpu to make the jagged lines in computer graphics appear smoother.

A screenshot is shown below, demonstrating how AA can work to reduce the jaggedness of lines:

Anisotropic Filtering Antialiasing will not resolve blurry surfaces on distant objects. A technique called Texture Filtering was used to raise the level of detail of distant textures These texture filtering methods are 'isotropic' methods, which means that they use a filtering pattern which is square.

Texture blurriness requires a non-square (typically rectangular or trapezoidal) filtering pattern.

A screenshot is shown below, demonstrating the way AF improves distant textures:

3D ACCELERATION
There are different steps involved in creating a 3d scene.

During 3D rendering different data travel across the bus. The two most common types are texture and geometry data.
Geometry data Texture data infrastructure on which scene is built on provides details to the scene

3D acceleration is done as shown in the block diagram

T&L Unit It takes a 3d scenes geometry and transforms into different coordinate spaces. It also performs lighting calculations , again relieving cpu from these math intensive tasks. Triangle Setup Engine It receives transformed geometry from T&L unit Converts it to a form recognised by Pixel Engine

Pixel Engine It applies assigned texture values each pixel. This gives each pixel the respective colour. After the pixel has been rendered it must be checked to see whether it is visible by checking the z value. Z Check Unit

It performs this process by reading the z buffer.

CPU VS GPU
CPU

GPU

General Purpose

More no of transistors CPU alone low performance More costly

Dedicated only for graphic purpose Less no of transistors CPU+GPU Better Performance Comparatively less costly

APPLICATIONS 2D or 3D graphics. Digital output to LCDS and LED displays. Texture mapping. Application support for high-intensity graphics software such as AutoCAD MPEG Decoding

These features are designed to lessen the work of the CPU and produce faster video and graphics.
Now the major application of GPU is in the mobile technology . Smart phones based on ANDROID technology & iPhone greatly rely on them. For higher versions of android, ice cream sandwich and above GPU is a must.

THE LEADING PRODUCERS OF GPU

ATI RADEON from the AMD family

GEFORCE series from the NVIDIA family

INTEL group of companies

REFERNCES

1. www.howstuffworks.com 2. www.tomshardware.com 3. www.intel.com 4. www.nvidia.com 5. www.extremetech.com 6. www.pcworld.com