Computing to the Limit with Heterogeneous CPU-FPGA Devices in a Video Fusion Application

Abstract

This paper presents a complete video fusion system with hardware acceleration and investigates its performance and energy optimization. The video fusion application is based on the Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transforms DT-CWT. Video fusion combines information from different spectral bands into a single representation and advanced algorithms based on wavelet transforms are compute and energy intensive. In this work the transforms are mapped to a hardware accelerator using high-level synthesis tools for the FPGA resulting in an increase of performance of the system by a factor of 3. In a second stage the hardware engine is transformed with a set of tools and detector blocks that allow the CPU device to monitor and pre-detect timing failures in the FPGA fabric. The CPU device can control the voltage and frequency of the FPGA and obtain a new working point with reducing power requirements by approximately 70i¾?% with an equivalent performance level. This results in an energy proportional computing system in which only the energy required to maintain a required level of performance is used.