6533b7d9fe1ef96bd126b8c1

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Accelerating Clifford Algebra Operations using GPUs and an OpenCL Code Generator

Antonio GentileSalvatore VitabileGiorgio VassalloSilvia Franchini

subject

Settore ING-INF/05 - Sistemi Di Elaborazione Delle InformazioniSpeedupHardware-software co-designOpenCLComputer scienceClifford algebraGeometric AlgebraParallel computingData typeMetaprogrammingComputer graphicsClifford AlgebraGeometric algebraComputingMethodologies_SYMBOLICANDALGEBRAICMANIPULATIONCode generationCentral processing unitGraphicsGraphics Processing Unit

description

Clifford Algebra (CA) is a powerful mathematical language that allows for a simple and intuitive representation of geometric objects and their transformations. It has important applications in many research fields, such as computer graphics, robotics, and machine vision. Direct hardware support of Clifford data types and operators is needed to accelerate applications based on Clifford Algebra. This paper proposes a mixed software-hardware system that exploits the computational power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to accelerate Clifford operations. A code generator, namely OpenCLifford, is presented that automatically generates Java and C libraries for the direct support of Clifford elements and operations as well as OpenCL kernels to be executed on the GPU. Experimental tests have been performed to evaluate the speedup of the OpenCL parallel code executed on the GPU against the baseline C code executed on the CPU. Average speedups of 47x and 27x have been measured for 3D and 5D Clifford Algebra, respectively. The paper also presents an execution analysis of an application for fractal generation showing a 35x speedup with respect to the baseline CPU execution.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2015-08-01
10.1109/dsd.2015.44http://hdl.handle.net/10447/167568