Specialization Opportunities in Graphical Workloads

Computer games are complex performance-critical graphical applications which require specialized GPU hardware. For this reason, GPU drivers often include many heuristics to help optimize throughput. Recently however, new APIs are emerging which sacrifice many heuristics for lower-level hardware control and more predictable driver behavior. This shifts the burden for many optimizations from GPU driver developers to game programmers, but also provides numerous opportunities to exploit application-specific knowledge."br/""br/"This paper examines different opportunities for specializing GPU code and reducing redundant data transfers. Static analysis of commercial games shows that 5-18% of GPU code is specializable by pruning dead data elements or moving portions to different graphics pipeline stages. In some games, up to 97% of the programs’ data inputs of a particular type, namely uniform variables, are unused, as well as up to 62% of those in the GPU internal vertex-fragment interface. This shows potential for improving memory usage and communication overheads. Insome test scenarios, removing dead uniform data can lead to 6x performance improvements."br/""br/"We also explore the upper limits of specialization if all dynamic inputs are constant at run-time. For instance, if uniform inputs are constant, up to 44% of instructions can be eliminated in some games, with a further 14% becoming constant-foldable at compile time. Analysis of run-time traces, reveals that 48-91% of uniform inputs are constant in real games, so values close to the upper limit may be achieved in practice

Open World Streaming: Automatic memory management in open world games without loading screens

[EN] Open world games are among the most appreciated games by players. They provide users the chance to explore a big world and they are very immersive. Open world games grant players the freedom to take any decision and enjoy their high interaction. In open world videogames the player, usually, controls an avatar over a big virtual world. So the player that controls the avatar takes its skin and, ideally, gets immersed in the virtual world. There is a good chance you know about some of the most famous open world games.[ES] Los videojuegos de mundo abierto son muy populares hoy en día y cada vez más. Generalmente este tipo de videojuegos tiene una cantidad de recursos tan grande que no caben en memoria principal. Por ello es necesario que los recursos del juego se vayan cargando en memoria principal a medida que el personaje pricipal avanza en el mundo virtual. A todo esto se le añade el reto de evitar las pantallas de carga, de manera que el usuario consigue una mayor experiencia de juego. Queremos conseguir una implementación de un sencillo motor de juegos que sirva de ejemplo práctico para mostrar cómo abordar el reto tecnológico que suponen loas juegos de mundo abierto.Juan Pérez, A. (2016). Open World Streaming: Automatic memory management in open world games without loading screens. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/63979.TFG