An exploration of CUDA and CBEA for a gravitational wave data-analysis application (Einstein@Home)

TL;DR

This paper compares CUDA and CBEA architectures for accelerating Einstein@Home gravitational wave data analysis, showing both architectures perform similarly in terms of achievable performance within the same development timeframe.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of CBEA and CUDA architectures for scientific data analysis, highlighting their suitability and comparable performance.

Findings

Both architectures are well-suited for the application.

Performance achieved is nearly identical for both architectures.

Development time for software is similar for both architectures.

Abstract

We present a detailed approach for making use of two new computer hardware architectures -- CBEA and CUDA -- for accelerating a scientific data-analysis application (Einstein@Home). Our results suggest that both the architectures suit the application quite well and the achievable performance in the same software developmental time-frame, is nearly identical.