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GPU-Accelerated Computing with Python 3 and CUDA

GPU-Accelerated Computing with Python 3 and CUDA

By : Niels Cautaerts, Hossein Ghorbanfekr
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GPU-Accelerated Computing with Python 3 and CUDA

GPU-Accelerated Computing with Python 3 and CUDA

By: Niels Cautaerts, Hossein Ghorbanfekr

Overview of this book

Writing high-performance Python code doesn’t have to mean switching to C++. This book shows you how to accelerate Python applications using NVIDIA’s CUDA platform and a modern ecosystem of Python tools and libraries. Aimed at researchers, engineers, and data scientists, it offers a practical yet deep understanding of GPU programming and how to fully exploit modern GPU hardware. You’ll begin with the fundamentals of CUDA programming in Python using Numba-CUDA, learning how GPUs work and how to write, execute, and debug custom GPU kernels. Building on this foundation, the book explores memory access optimization, asynchronous execution with CUDA streams, and multi-GPU scaling using Dask-CUDA. Performance analysis and tuning are emphasized throughout, using NVIDIA Nsight profilers. You’ll also learn to use high-level GPU libraries such as JAX, CuPy, and RAPIDS to accelerate numerical Python workflows with minimal code changes. These techniques are applied to real-world examples, including PDE solvers, image processing, physical simulations, and transformer models. Written by experienced GPU practitioners, this hands-on guide emphasizes reproducible workflows using Python 3.10+, CUDA 12.3+, and tools like the Pixi package manager. By the end, you’ll have future-ready skills for building scalable GPU applications in Python.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
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1
Part 1: Fundamentals of GPU programming with CUDA in Python 3
6
Part 2: Performance Optimization and Advanced CUDA Topics
10
Part 3: Using High-Level Python Libraries for GPU Computation
14
Part 4: Real-World Example Applications
19
Part 5: Beyond This Book
23
Index

Multiple CPU threads with CUDA streams

In our previous example, all CUDA operations queued on multiple streams were issued from a single CPU thread. This can potentially create a computational bottleneck if preparing and submitting tasks to the streams requires significant CPU processing or if the host is blocked on I/O. In such cases, multiple CPU threads can issue work to the GPU concurrently, as shown in the following schematic diagram. Multithreading is especially useful when I/O or host-side preparation would otherwise serialize GPU work if only a single thread were responsible. The CUDA runtime API is thread-safe, so each CPU thread can independently create and use its own CUDA stream. This allows the CPU to keep feeding work to the GPU while other streams are still processing data:

Image 7

Figure 6.7 – Multiple CPU threads supplying data to each CUDA stream

For Python, the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) must be taken into account. Although the GIL restricts parallel execution of...

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GPU-Accelerated Computing with Python 3 and CUDA
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