Software-based Single-node Multi-GPU Systems for Interactive Display Wall

Abstract

A display wall, one of the multiple display environments (MDEs), has been widely adopted in various fields including consumer electronics. Conventional display walls are constructed by utilizing cluster-based systems where multiple displays are connected via multiple cluster nodes. However, cluster-based systems have suffered from communication overheads among the cluster nodes when they provide interaction features and run diverse applications. This paper proposes a software-based single-node multi-GPU system for interactive display walls. The proposed system allows multiple GPUs in a single-node system to connect multiple displays, by providing an individual compositor for each GPU in the system. This paper also analyzes memory management models of multi-GPU systems and compositing overheads for multiple displays. Experimental results show that the FPS (frames per second) of the proposed system outperforms that of the conventional system by up to 1.36x, reducing copy overheads among the GPUs by efficient memory management and distributing compositing overheads to multiple GPUs.