A Minimalistic Architecture for Reconfigurable WFS-Based Immersive-Audio

Abstract

We propose a minimalistic processor architecture tailoring Wave Field Synthesis (WFS)-based audio applications to configurable hardware. Eleven high-level instructions provide the required flexibility for embedded WFS customization. We describe the implementation of the proposed instructions and apply them to a multi-core reconfigurable WFS architecture. Our approach combines software programming flexibility with improved hardware performance and low power consumption. Experimental results suggest that our Virtex4FX60-based FPGA prototype, running at 100 MHz, can provide a kernel speedup of up to 4.5 times compared to an OpenMP-annotated software solution implemented on a Core2 Duo at 3.0 GHz. Furthermore, when larger FPGAs are utilized, we estimate that our system can render in real-time up to 32 acoustic sources when driving 64 loudspeakers. Ultimately, we estimated that the proposed system requires approximately 6 Watts, which is at least an order of magnitude less power compared to x86-based approaches.