Methods and apparatus for interactive debugging on a non-preemptible graphics processing unit
US8572573B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 9, 2012 |
| Grant date | Oct 29, 2013 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Apr 24, 2032 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F11/3632
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Systems and methods are disclosed for performing interactive debugging of shader programs using a non-preemptible graphics processing unit (GPU). An iterative process is employed to repeatedly re-launch a workload for processing by the shader program on the GPU. When the GPU encounters a hardware stop event, such as by reaching a breakpoint in any thread of the shader program, encountering a hardware exception, or failing a software assertion in the shader program, the state of any executing threads is saved, graphics memory is copied to system memory, and any currently executing threads are killed to enable the GPU to process graphics data for updating a display device. Each pass of the workload may result in incrementally more data being processed. In effect, the changing state and variable data resulting from each pass of the workload has the effect that the debugger is incrementally stepping through the shader program.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.