KGPU is a GPU computing framework for the Linux kernel. It allows Linux kernel to call CUDA programs running on GPUs directly. The motivation is to augment operating systems with GPUs so that not only userspace applications but also the operating system itself can benefit from GPU acceleration. It can also free the CPU from some computation intensive work by enabling the GPU as an extra computing device.
Modern GPUs can be used for more than just graphics processing; they can run general-purpose programs as well. While not well-suited to all types of programs, they excel on code that can make use of their high degree of parallelism. Most uses of so-called ``General Purpose GPU'' (GPGPU) computation have been outside the realm of systems software. However, recent work on software routers and encrypted network connections has given examples of how GPGPUs can be applied to tasks more traditionally within the realm of operating systems. These uses are only scratching the surface. Other examples of system-level tasks that can take advantage of GPUs include general cryptography, pattern matching, program analysis, and acceleration of basic commonly-used algorithms; we give more details in our whitepaper. These tasks have applications on the desktop, on the server, and in the datacenter.
The current KGPU release includes a demo of GPU augmentation: a GPU-accelerated AES cipher, which can be used in conjunction with the eCryptfs encrypted filesystem. This enables read/write bandwidths for an ecrypted filesystem that can reach a factor of 3x ~ 4x improvement over an optimized CPU implementation (using a GTX 480 GPU).
Pretty interesting project. There is no reason that the kernel should not take more advantage of the GPU since it's just sitting there idle most of the time anyway. It does bring an interesting avenue for attack though. Imagine playing a "game" that in reality loads something into kernel space, all on the GPU. Suddenly things like NX Bit and such are thrown out the window.
