GPUs Reliability Dependence on Degree of Parallelism

A higher Degree of Parallelism decreases the code execution time. However, a higher scheduler strain is necessary to manage the increased number of parallel processes, which have the countermeasure of increasing the graphics processing unit (GPU) cross section. This hypothesis is confirmed by extensive neutron irradiation testing to study how the Degree of Parallelism affects GPU reliability. Moreover, the cache distribution forced by different Degrees of Parallelism is proved to influence the application error rate. Finally, the Mean Executions Between Failures metric is introduced to evaluate the amount of data computed correctly by the GPU on a practical application.