Single Precision vs Double Precision GPUs?

[spimager]

We're looking to buy several GPUs for our cluster and were wondering if double precision is necessary for large datasets or if we can get away with single precision?

[psteinb]

Hi spimager,
We are facing similar questions on a daily basis. And the answer is typically: it depends. If you are somewhat certain that your payload is only SP, gaming cards offer the best price per performance within certain limits. The latter being the amount of hours used and the memory accuracy. For example, if you have users that run SPIM_Registration once or twice per day or less, then gaming cards maybe good. After all, if one card fails, replacing them is financially feasible. If you wanna be sure to cover other apps that require DP, there is no way around HPC cards. Rest assured that many other institutions wonder about the same question. If you wanna, discuss more details in terms of what servers to choose and what cards offer a good price per value etc, feel free to ring me up starting Tuesday next week.
Best,
P

[StephanPreibisch]

Hi, specifically the SPIM Reconstruction uses only single-precision for memory efficiency (CPU & GPU versions). The precision is not that crucial in this case.

[spimager]

Great! Thanks, guys!