GPU Architecture

[Caligynemania]

I am a college student in an Architectural Design course (for processors). I would like to do an individual project on a GPU (NVIDIA/ATI) as I think it would be unique and different from the focus of our course- general purpose CPUs (the IA64 architecture to be exact). I have searched both the NVIDIA and ATI developer sites and the net for quite some time for this information, but have only gathered rudimentary information. I need to know information such as instruction field formats, widths, op codes, register architectures, memory mappings, CPU/GPU interface etc etc. I have contacted both ATI and NVIDIA for this information, but have so far not received a response. I plan on also contacting their AIB partners (Asus, Abit, EVGA, etc etc) to see if they can provide me with any information.

Are there any other steps I can take to pin down this kind of information?
Is there a website? A manual/whitepaper (the SDKs do not contain this information)?
Thanks for any information in advance.
-Caligynemania

 

[Lord Banshee]

i do not think you can get those type of things unlease you get a license to use the GPU.

But if you do find this information i would love to see it too

I am finishing up my first Digital Class (Digital Logic) and just finish making a Small CPU which is pretty cool... i am taking uProcessor this summer ... i can not wait love this class

 

[Caligynemania]

Well, I'm not sure the information isn't available. For instance, there is copious documentation on the IA32, IA64, SPARC, MIPS, ALPHA, PDP-11, etc etc processor architectures. I find it somewhat disturbing and ridiculous that it is so hard to find information on the NVIDIA and ATI architectures.

 

[Lord Banshee]

lol well thats what i get for assumeing

Have you tried looking up Matrox(sp?) or maybe even the IGP Intel chip?

 

[Caligynemania]

I havent looked into the Matrox at all, I'll check that out. Also the Quadro may be of interest since it is for true developers, and so machine level instructions may be more important. As far as I know, the Intel IGP is just a transformation of graphics data into the standard CPU ISA.