Using CUDA for accelerating softwares Can it be done ?

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

Hi,

I recently started working with CUDA and its truly amazing the performance gain we can achieve by using a GPU. I was wondering if we can also use the Graphic card to accelerate some software applications with CUDA.

I know that there is a patch for MATLAB using CUDA, but I understand that the coding must be different too. i.e, we can not use the regular code for accelerting on the graphic card (similar to our .cu programs)

So, how do we accelerate softwares which are very compute intensive but have no coding involed (say Volume graphics studio max volume graphics studio max for example). Can we use CUDA to accelerate such softwares?

Thanks…

2

no

3

The program you wish to accelerate needs to either provide a plugin interface or produce intermediate output that could be transferred to your CUDA application, which would turn it into final results faster than the original program.

If the program in question is closed/finalized and doesn’t support any external tools/plugins etc. than you’re out of luck.

However, if there’s a way to call external routines or plugins, than there’s nothing stopping you from writing a plugin that uses the GPU. CUDA apps compile to executable files that act like any other applications for your OS (the GPU usage is transparent).

If you can’t use plugins, the other way is to try to parse the files generated by the program and work on that. For example, if you had a 3d graphics program that enabled you to create 3d scenes but rendering them with lightning etc. took a long time (CPU only), you could write a standalone CUDA app that would read the file that stores the scene and do the rendering calculations on the GPU (this particular example might not make much sense as 3d graphics apps probably usually use GPU already?). That’s a lot of work that may be potentially not worth it but is theoretically possible.

4

HOw come something can be compute intensive without involving coding :-)

You mean – you dont have source code??? Then, yes, as said abvoe – plugins could help.

If you dont have plugins and if you dont have source code and if you know how to accelerate it then – You have a business opportunity in hand.

Best Regards,

Sarnath aka Kandi