Evaluating the radiation sensitivity of GPGPU caches: New algorithms and experimental results

Abstract

Given their high computational power, General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) are increasingly adopted: GPGPUs have begun to be preferred to CPUs for several computationally intensive applications, not necessarily related to computer graphics. However, their sensitivity to radiation still requires to be fully evaluated. In this context, GPGPU data caches and shared memory have a key role since they allow to increase performance by sharing data between the parallel resources of a GPGPU and minimizing the memory accesses overhead. In this paper we present three new algorithms designed to support radiation experiments aimed at evaluating the radiation sensitivity of GPGPU data caches and shared memory. We also report the cross-section and Failure In Time results from neutron testing experiments performed on a commercial-off-the-shelf GPGPU using the proposed algorithms, with particular emphasis on the shared memory and on the L1 and L2 data caches.