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Re: Data binning with CUDA

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg123003] Re: Data binning with CUDA
• From: "Oleksandr Rasputinov" <oleksandr_rasputinov at hmamail.com>
• Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 05:36:07 -0500 (EST)
• Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
• References: <ja8506$ig4$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 11:47:18 -0000, psycho_dad <s.nesseris at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Is it possible to bin data (actually I am only interested in the number  
> of
> points in each bin) by using only the CUDA functions available in  
> Mathematica (CUDAMap etc)? The reason for this is that CUDAFunctionLoad  
> for some reason is not working, so I have to use only what's built-in.
>
> Important note: The data I want to apply this on are on the order of  
> 10^6, they are in the range [0,1] and I want to find the number of  
> points in bins of size 0.01.
>
> [...]
>
> So, what I find is that in terms of speed (unsurpisingly) BinCounts is  
> faster that HistogramList which is faster than MyCudaBin.
>
> Obviously, my implementation sucks and that's why I ask for help!
>
> Any help is appreciated!!!
>
> Cheers,
> Savvas
>

Although I don't have CUDA-capable hardware so I can't suggest an  
alternative implementation, I would strongly suspect that for only 10^6  
points a CPU-based approach will always be faster than a CUDA one no  
matter how optimised the code might be. The situation will likely be  
different for 10^7 points or with simultaneous processing of many lists of  
10^6 points, but for such small inputs as you suggest above the processing  
time will be dominated by latency rather than throughput--and copying  
small arrays to the graphics card and back several times is inherently a  
fairly high-latency operation.