A High Performance Parallel Approach to Delay Sum Beamformer in a Homogeneous Multicore Environment

A Cache-Aware Beamformer (CABF) algorithm for the DAS beamformer in a homogeneous multicore processor environment is presented. The context of the proposed algorithm is established by discussing the case for a refined multicore implementation of the beamformer algorithm for a sonar application. The algorithm is designed, implemented, and compared to a regular pthread multicore implementation and a standard OpenMP-based implementation, using arithmetic intensity as the metric. FMA implementations of the algorithms are carried out, and the CABF algorithm is shown to achieve a better arithmetic intensity. A 6000-element array is designed with a simultaneous forming of 200 beams to test the efficacy of cabf in a multicore platform. The results show a 73 % increase in GFLOPS for FMA operations. The performance of the beamformer algorithm for different data sizes is studied, and on average, a 36 % improvement in computational performance is achieved compared to the OpenMP-based implementation.