Examining the accuracy and the precision of PDEs for FPGA computations
András Kiss, Zoltán Nagy, Árpád Csı́k, Péter Szolgay · 2012
There are a large number of problems which can be accelerated by using architectures on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). However sometimes the complexity of a problem does not allow to map it onto a specific FPGA. In that case analysis of precision of the arithmetic unit which may solve the computational problem can be a good attempt to fit the architecture and to accelerate its computation. Numerical algorithm can be implemented using fixed-point or floating point arithmetic (or mixed (both)) with different precision. The aim of the article is not to optimize the numerical algorithm but to find a smaller arithmetic unit precision, which results enough accuracy and fits to smaller FPGA-s. In the paper, one particular problem type is investigated, namely the accuracy of the solution of a simple Partial Differential Equation (PDE). The accuracy measurement is done on an FPGA with different bit width. The solution of the advection equation is analyzed using first and second order discretization methods. As a result we managed to find an optimal bit width for the solution on a specific FPGA.