Texture bind reuse or rebind

[JeremyYuan]

Hi, I use texture for data manipulation. I am quite new to texture.
My use case is a texture binds to a buffer, data in the buffer will be updated in a loop, within the loop, a kernel will access the buffer via texture.
my question is,
should I

1. bind the texture
2. call kernel
3. unbind texture
4. update buffer
5. go back to 1

or

1. bind the texture
2. call kernel
3. update buffer
4. go back to 2

end of loop
unbind texture

thanks a lot.

[Robert_Crovella]

texture binding (texture references) is deprecated, you should use bindless textures (texture objects)

The following should be safe:

1. create cudaArray for texture buffer
2. fill cudaArray
3. create texture object using cudaArray
4. call kernel
5. destroy texture object
6. go to step 2

you could also use 2 textures and ping-pong between them, for example to overlap the update of the cudaArray with the kernel execution

[JeremyYuan]

OK, thank you for your recomendation, I’ll try texture object.
BTW, But if texture references must be used, which way above is better?

[njuffa]

(1) Thou shalt not use texture references. Seriously. Don’t do it.

(2) Instead of asking hypotheticals as to which way works better, I recommend running some quick experiments to find out which way works better in the specific context of your use case.