Field programmable gate array-assigned complex-valued computation and its limits

Journal Article · Mon Sep 15 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Review of Scientific Instruments

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4894211· OSTI ID:22314442

Bernard-Schwarz, Maria ^[1]; Zwick, Wolfgang; Klier, Jochen ^[1]; Wenzel, Lothar ^[2]; Gröschl, Martin ^[3]

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1. National Instruments, Ganghoferstrasse 70b, 80339 Munich (Germany)
2. National Instruments, 11500 N MOPac Expy, Austin, Texas 78759 (United States)
3. Institute of Applied Physics, TU Wien, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 8, 1040 Wien (Austria)

We discuss how leveraging Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology as part of a high performance computing platform reduces latency to meet the demanding real time constraints of a quantum optics simulation. Implementations of complex-valued operations using fixed point numeric on a Virtex-5 FPGA compare favorably to more conventional solutions on a central processing unit. Our investigation explores the performance of multiple fixed point options along with a traditional 64 bits floating point version. With this information, the lowest execution times can be estimated. Relative error is examined to ensure simulation accuracy is maintained.

• OSTI ID: 22314442
• Journal Information: Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 85, Issue 9; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0034-6748
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ACCURACY
CALCULATION METHODS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
ERRORS
LIMITING VALUES
MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS
OPTICS
PERFORMANCE
QUANTUM MECHANICS
REAL TIME SYSTEMS