LocalityGuru: A PTX Analyzer for Extracting Thread Block-level Locality in GPGPUs

Exploiting data locality in GPGPUs is critical for efficiently using the smaller data caches and handling the memory bottleneck problem. This paper proposes a thread block-centric locality analysis, which identifies the locality among the thread blocks (TBs) in terms of a number of common data references. In LocalityGuru, we seek to employ a detailed just-in-time (JIT) compilation analysis of the static memory accesses in the source code and derive the mapping between the threads and data indices at kernel-launch-time. Our locality analysis technique can be employed at multiple granularities such as threads, warps, and thread blocks in a GPU Kernel. This information can be leveraged to help make smarter decisions for locality-aware data-partition, memory page data placement, cache management, and scheduling in single-GPU and multi-GPU systems. The results of the LocalityGuru PTX analyzer are then validated by comparing with the Locality graph obtained through profiling. Since the entire analysis is carried out by the compiler before the kernel launch time, it does not introduce any timing overhead to the kernel execution time.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a thread block-centric locality analysis method to efficiently use data caches and address memory bottleneck issues in GPGPUs. By conducting detailed JIT compilation analysis and deriving mappings between threads and data indices at kernel-launch-time, smarter decisions and data partition management can be achieved.