New SCAPP option enables high- end digitizers to do fast digital signal processing | Spectrum
The Spectrum approach uses a standard off-the-shelf GPU, based on Nvidia’s CUDA Standard. The GPU connects directly with the Spectrum digitizer card, with no more CPU interaction, opening the huge parallel core architecture of the CUDA card for signal processing. The structure of a CUDA graphics card fits very well as it is designed for parallel data processing, which is exactly the same as most signal processing jobs. For example, the processing tasks of data conversion, filtering, averaging, baseline suppression, FFT window functions or even FFTs themselves can all be easily parallelized.
Comparing the SCAPP approach to any FPGA-based solution the TCO is very low: a matching CUDA graphics card ranges from around 150€ to 3000€ and the necessary software development kits (SDKs) are free of charge. However, the largest cost saver is the development time. Instead of spending weeks to just understand the FDK, the structure of the FPGA firmware, the FPGA design suite and the Simulation tools, the user can start immediately with some easy-to-understand C-Code and common design tools.
The SCAPP driver package consists of the driver extension for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) that allows the direct data transfer from Digitizer to GPU. It includes a set of examples for interaction with the digitizer and the CUDA-card and another set of CUDA parallel processing examples with easy building blocks for basic functions like filtering, averaging, data de-multiplexing, data conversion or FFT. All the software is based on C/C++ and can easily be implemented and improved with normal programming skills. Starting with tested and optimized parallel processing examples gives first results within minutes.