5. Memory evolution

5.1 Hierarchy

As soon as they were introduced with the Tesla architecture, several differences from the classic CPU operating model were introduced. Firstly, from the outset, the register bank operated exclusively in vector mode, serving in particular as an operand collector. In other words, the registers can be seen as a micro-cache designed to serve pipelined computing units. Secondly, to improve throughput to the units, several types of memory have been introduced: registers, local memory, shared memory, global memory, constant memory and texture memory. Each of these memories...