I'm starting to use CUDA at the moment and have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed with the C API. I understand the reasons for choosing C but had the language been based on C++ instead, several aspects would have been a lot simpler, e.g. device memory allocation (via cudaMalloc).
My plan was to do this myself, using overloaded operator new with placement new and RAII (two alternatives). I'm wondering if there are any caveats that I haven't noticed so far. The code seems to work but I'm still wondering about potential memory leaks.
The usage of the RAII code would be as follows:
CudaArray<float> device_data(SIZE);
// Use `device_data` as if it were a raw pointer.
Perhaps a class is overkill in this context (especially since you'd still have to use cudaMemcpy, the class only encapsulating RAII) so the other approach would be placement new:
float* device_data = new (cudaDevice) float[SIZE];
// Use `device_data` …
operator delete [](device_data, cudaDevice);
Here, cudaDevice merely acts as a tag to trigger the overload. However, since in normal placement new this would indicate the placement, I find the syntax oddly consistent and perhaps even preferable to using a class.
I'd appreciate criticism of every kind. Does somebody perhaps know if something in this direction is planned for the next version of CUDA (which, as I've heard, will improve its C++ support, whatever they mean by that).
So, my question is actually threefold:
- Is my placement
newoverload semantically correct? Does it leak memory? - Does anybody have information about future CUDA developments that go in this general direction (let's face it: C interfaces in C++ s*ck)?
- How can I take this further in a consistent manner (t