HetGPU: The pursuit of making binary compatibility towards GPUs

Abstract

Heterogeneous GPU infrastructures present a binary compatibility challenge: code compiled for one vendor's GPU will not run on another due to divergent instruction sets, execution models, and driver stacks . We propose hetGPU, a new system comprising a compiler, runtime, and abstraction layer that together enable a single GPU binary to execute on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Tenstorrent hardware. The hetGPU compiler emits an architecture-agnostic GPU intermediate representation (IR) and inserts metadata for managing execution state. The hetGPU runtime then dynamically translates this IR to the target GPU's native code and provides a uniform abstraction of threads, memory, and synchronization. Our design tackles key challenges: differing SIMT vs. MIMD execution (warps on NVIDIA/AMD vs. many-core RISC-V on Tenstorrent), varied instruction sets, scheduling and memory model discrepancies, and the need for state serialization for live migration. We detail the hetGPU architecture, including the IR transformation pipeline, a state capture/reload mechanism for live GPU migration, and an abstraction layer that bridges warp-centric and core-centric designs. Preliminary evaluation demonstrates that unmodified GPU binaries compiled with hetGPU can be migrated across disparate GPUs with minimal overhead, opening the door to vendor-agnostic GPU computing.