What is a GPU architecture?

[Almer]

I keep hearing about architecture when people talk about GPUs. I feel like it's something important. But I don't know what it actually is. Can someone explain in simpler terms?

[Tan3l6]

It's the way GPUs are made, like architecture of houses. The difference is that instead of rooms and walls there are microscopic electronic components. This being the short answer. 

A good article  - https://nielshagoort.com/2019/03/12/exploring-the-gpu-architecture/

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Its how the transistors in the die are put together.

its not that accurate, but its the basic idea.

[igormp]

20 minutes ago, Almer said:

I keep hearing about architecture when people talk about GPUs. I feel like it's something important. But I don't know what it actually is. Can someone explain in simpler terms?

It's how you lay out components internally, and how to you make them talk to each other.

[Eigenvektor]

23 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

It's the way GPUs are made, like architecture of houses.

To stay with this example, it's kind of the overall concept of how to build a house (or GPU).

 

The core idea of what a house is and how it works has stayed the same over the centuries, but there have been many improvements made. A modern house has stuff like electric lighting, running water and so one, while a house a century ago might not.

 

In some ways GPU architectures are similar. The core idea of what a GPU is and how it works has stayed the same, but each new generation (each new architecture) improves on some things. This means over the years GPUs have gotten faster, more power efficient and so on. Some new architectures bring minor improvements, others bring radical changes like the introduction of real time raytracing.

 

As a user you typically don't have to know anything about the architecture of a GPU. Just look at its price, benchmarks and decide whether it is worth to have for you or not.

[Jurrunio]

The design of the CPU on a large scale. Imagine food and its recipe, food is the GPU and recipe is the architecture.