Workload Characterization of 3D Games

Author

Roca, Jordi ; Moya, Victor ; González, Carlos ; Solís, Chema ; Fernández, Agustín ; Espasa, Roger

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Archit., Univ. Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona

fYear

2006

fDate

25-27 Oct. 2006

Firstpage

17

Lastpage

26

Abstract

The rapid pace of change in 3D game technology makes workload characterization necessary for every game generation. Comparing to CPU characterization, far less quantitative information about games is available. This paper focuses on analyzing a set of modern 3D games at the API call level and at the micro architectural level using the Attila simulator. In addition to common geometry metrics and, in order to understand tradeoffs in modern GPUs, the microarchitectural level metrics allow us to analyze performance key characteristics such as the balance between texture and ALU instructions in fragment programs, dynamic anisotropic ratios, vertex, z-stencil, color and texture cache performance

Keywords

computational geometry; computer games; computer graphic equipment; computer graphics; 3D games; ALU instructions; API call level; Attila simulator; GPU; geometry metrics; microarchitectural level metrics; performance analysis; texture cache performance; workload characterization; Computer aided instruction; Computer architecture; Functional programming; Geometry; Graphics; Information filtering; Microarchitecture; Pipelines; Rendering (computer graphics); Solid modeling;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Workload Characterization, 2006 IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

San Jose, CA

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0508-4

Electronic_ISBN

1-4244-0509-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IISWC.2006.302726

Filename

4086130