A comparison of the FDTD algorithm implemented on an integrated GPU versus a GPU configured as a co-processor

GPUs are commonly configured as slave devices, receiving FDTD task information and data from the host computer via a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) bus. The Accelerated Processing Uni t(APU) has both an integrated GPU and several conventional cores on the same Integrated Circuit die. The FDTD method is implemented on the Accelerated Processing Unit's integrated GPU using the DirectCompute application programming interface and compared against an FDTD implementation on a GPU configured as a co-processor via a PCIe bus. The FDTD method is also implemented in parallel on the APU using the vector processing capability of the cores. The arrangement of both GPU and CPU cores on the same die has the potential to allow the concurrent processing of the FDTD method on both GPU and multi-core processor.