Processor Type (Environment setting)

Tools that honor the Processor Type environment allow you to choose where and how you want to process your data.

You can process your data using the computer central processing unit (CPU) or the graphics processing unit (GPU).

GPUs are effective at graphics and image processing, for which their highly parallel structure makes them efficient in processing large blocks of data in a repetitive manner. This processing occurs locally.

CPU processing, which is generally located on the frame buffer of the display, can be parallelized across multiple cores and instances, as handled by the Parallel Processing Factor environment setting.

Usage notes

• A graphics card can support multiple GPUs.
• A CPU supports multiple processing cores, and processing can be deployed across multiple machines.
• Geoprocessing tools will only process data on the GPU if GPU is selected. Otherwise, data is processed using the CPU.

Dialog syntax

• Processor type—Choose which processor type you want to deploy from the drop-down menu.
  • Empty—A geoprocessing tool interprets no value as having no restrictions. No restrictions means there is no override of a potential default setting in the underlying layers. This is the default.
  • CPU—Data will be processed using the computer's CPU.
  • GPU—Data will be processed using the GPU. If GPU is selected, the applicable geoprocessing tools will disable Parallel Processing Factor to ensure there is only one instance on the GPU.

Scripting syntax

arcpy.env.processorType = processor_type

processorType syntax

Parameter

Explanation

processor_type

The type of processor to be used: Empty—A geoprocessing tool interprets a null value as having no restrictions. No restrictions means there is no override of a potential default setting in the underlying layers. This is the default. CPU—Data will be processed using the computer's CPU. GPU—Data will processed using the GPU. If GPU is selected, the applicable geoprocessing tool will disable parallelProcessingFactor to ensure there is only one instance on the GPU.

Script example

import arcpy

# Set the processor type environment to GPU
arcpy.env.processorType = "GPU"