Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 great way to learn cuda February 12, 2010
S. Yutzy (Cleveland, OH)
12 out of 16 found this review helpful
One of the problems with many parallel programming books is that they take too general of an approach, which can leave the reader to figure out how to implement the ideas using the library of his/her choosing. There's certainly a place for such a book in the world, but not if you want to get up and running quickly.
Programming Massively Parallel Processors presents parallel programming from the perspective of someone programming an NVIDIA GPU using their CUDA platform. From matrix multiplication (the "hello world" of the parallel computing world) to fine-tuned optimization, this book walks the reader through step by step not only how to do it, but how to think about it for any arbitrary problem.
The introduction mentions that this book does not require a background in computer architecture or C/C++ programming experience, and while that's largely true, I think it would be extremely helpful to come into a topic like this with at least some exposure in those areas.
Summary: this book is the best reference I've found for learning parallel programming "the CUDA way". Many of the concepts will carry over to other approaches (OpenMP, MPI, etc.), but this is by and large a CUDA book. Highly recommended.
An excellent guide to learn CUDA August 8, 2010
B. Perez (Bogota, Colombia)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is all you need to start learning CUDA, includes good exercises and online material.
A must-have book.
 a little odd but good enough for first pass March 20, 2010
Sergei Morozov (Stanford, CA United States)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book is a much better introduction to programming GPUs via CUDA than CUDA manual, or some presentation floating on the web. It is a little odd in coverage and language. You can tell it is written by two people with different command of English as well as passion. One co-author seems to be trying very hard to be colorful and looking for idiot-proof analogies but is prone to repetition. The other co-author sounds like a dry marketing droid sometimes. There are some mistakes in the codes in the book, but not too many since they don't dwell too long on code listings. In terms of coverage, I wish they'd cover texture memories, profiling tools, examples beyond simple matrix multiplication, and advice on computational thinking for codes with random access patterns. Chapters 6, 8, 9, and 10 are worth reading several times as they are full of practical tricks to use to trade one performance limiter for another in the quest for higher performance.
Great for beginners February 22, 2010
Raymond Tay (singapore)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I think this book was written with the beginner in mind - if you're new to CUDA and having issues with understanding NVIDIA's documentation on the subject then this is the book to get. The author(s) took time to clarify and solidify some of the more difficult terms to understand e.g. memory bandwidth utilization, optimizing strategies but there are shortcomings in the book and two i could think of are typos (this really an issue cos it happens to every other book i've read) and the other would be using more examples to solidify concepts and illustrating them.
In a nutshell, a great beginner's book but not a handbook sort of book.
Effective for beginners, good intro to CUDA and Tesla for pros February 25, 2010
John West
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
As a beginning text this book has a significant advantage that beginning texts written for MPI, OpenMP, and so on don't have: there are 200 million CUDA-capable GPUs already deployed, and the odds are pretty good that most readers either have, or can readily get access to, a computer on which they can meaningfully learn parallel programming. If you are new to parallel programming and have access to a Tesla GPU, this book is a fine place to start your education. Readers already comfortable with parallel programming will find clear explanations of the Tesla GPU architecture and the performance implications of its hardware features, as well as a solid introduction to the principles of programming in CUDA, though they'll probably do a lot of skimming over the already-familiar basics.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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