Performance Evaluation of Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) Computation Accelerated by FPGA-based Custom Computing Machine

Abstract

This paper evaluates the performance of the 2D FDTD computation on our FPGA-based array processor. So far, we have proposed the systolic computational-memory architecture for custom computing machines tailored for numerical computations with difference schemes, and implemented the array-processor based on this architecture with a single ALTERA StratixII FPGA. The array processor is composed of a two-dimensional array of programmable PEs with mesh network so that computations on a grid are performed in parallel. We wrote and executed codes for the 2D FDTD computation on the array-processor. We obtained almost the same results by FPGA as those by AMD Athlon64 processor. In comparison with AMD Athlon64 processor running at 2.4 GHz, the array-processor operating at 106 MHz achieved over 7 times faster computation for the 2D FDTD problem, which corresponds to the actual performance of 16.2 GFlop/s. The high utilization of the adders and the multipliers of the array processor means that the architecture is also suitable for the FDTD method.