High Performance and Low Power Architectures: GPU vs. FPGA for Fast Factorized Backprojection

The question if new embedded low power Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) can compete with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in terms of performance and efficiency is addressed. A Virtex 6 and a Virtex Ultrascale+ FPGA are compared to a Jetson TX2 GPU. Instead of basing the comparison on manufacturer reference numbers, hand optimized high performance implementations of the Fast Factorized Backprojection (FFBP) algorithm for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image generation have been investigated. Performance is measured in image lines per second and efficiency in performance per power. The Virtex Ultrascale+ provides a runtime speed-up of about 6.5x and an efficiency improvement of about 4.3x compared to the Jetson TX2 GPU.