Real-Time High-Throughput Sonar Beamforming Kernels Using
Native Signal Processing and Memory Latency Hiding Techniques
Mr. Gregory E. Allen
Applied Research Laboratories, UT Austin
Friday, October 15th, 2:00 PM, ENS 302
gallen@arlut.utexas.edu
Abstract
We evaluate the use of native signal processing with loop unrolling and
software prefetching to achieve high-performance digital signal
processing on general-purpose processors. We apply these techniques to
minimize the number of processors necessary for real-time implementation
of a 3-D sonar beamformer. Because our beamforming kernels operate on
high-throughput (~100 MB/s) input/output streams, memory latency hiding
techniques are key for maximum performance. On the Sun UltraSPARC-II
processor, we find speedups of 2.4 for hand loop unrolling, 1.46 for the
Visual Instruction Set over floating-point arithmetic in C, and 1.33 for
software prefetching.
Greg Allen's
Beamforming Web Page.
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The Web address for the Telecommunications and Signal Processing Seminars is
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