Obtaining a 35x Speedup in 2D Phase Unwrapping Using Commodity Graphics Processors

Abstract

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are a powerful tool for numerical computation. The GPU architecture and computational model are uniquely designed for high-resolution high-speed grid-based calculations. This capability can be utilized to accelerate certain classes of compute-intensive radar signal processing algorithms. Characteristics of a problem well-suited for computation on a GPU include high levels of data parallelism, low control logic, uniform boundary conditions, and well-defined input and output. We describe the implementation of two-dimensional multigrid least-squares weighted phase unwrapping on a GPU and demonstrate a large speedup over C and MATLAB implementations. Details of the GPU computation are provided. Background information on the GPU architecture and its applicability to general-purpose computation is discussed.