APPROXIMATE DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING AND NEURAL NETWORKS ON GAME HARDWARE

Abstract- Modern graphics processing units (GPU) and game consoles are used for much more than simply 3D graphics applications and video games. From machine vision to finite element analysis, GPU’s are being used in diverse applications, collectively called General Purpose computation onf Graphics Processor Units (GPGPU). Additionally, game consoles are entering the market of high performance computing as inexpensive nodes in computing clusters. This paper explores the capabilities and limitations of modern GPU’s and game consoles, surveying the ADP and neural network technologies that can be applied to these devices. On the host system side, the application generates a data structure to be rendered, consisting of a set of verticies and their corresponding colors that define a polygon. This data structure is passed to the vertex processor, which is the first programmable unit in the graphics pipeline, which typically applies transformations to the vertices. The rasterizer then maps these coordinates to pixel locations, generating a set of fragments. These fragments are then passed to the fragment processor, the second programmable unit in the pipeline. I