Sound propagation cellular processors architectures, comparisons and performances

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss and compare several architectural possibilities for implementing a simulator for (ultra) sound propagation in a controlled environment (e.g. using specified obstacles and signal sources). Although initially such sound propagation simulators were designed to assist the design of robotic "ears" of autonomous agents trying to reconstruct an image of the environment, its use expands beyond its initial goals. We are particularly interested here to define the limits and the constraints for kilo-processor architectures capable to implement such systems at reasonable costs. Our results for various implementations (software, FPGA, GPU/with CUDA) are considered with some proposals for suitable kilo-processor architectures.