Accelerating Missile Threat Simulations Using Personal Computer Graphics Cards

Abstract

The authors use inexpensive personal computer graphics cards to perform the intensive image-processing computations done in a heat-seeking missile’s tracking systems and thereby dramatically reduce the execution time of missile threat simulations used by military mission planners. Using an innovative processing algorithm, these calculations are accomplished up to 3.5 times faster in graphic cards versus using a conventional CPU. Through a combination of this and other software optimizations, simulation time was reduced by 33%.

Keywords

GPU graphics processors hardware assisted simulation GPU algorithm

References

Defense Modeling and Simulation Office. 2005. Available from https://www.dmso.mil/public/

Moreland, K. , and E. Angel . 2003. The FFT on a GPU. In SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Workshop on Graphics Hardware 2003, Eurographics Association, July, pp. 112-119.

Kruger, J. , and R. Westermann . 2003. Linear algebra operators for GPU implementation of numerical algorithms. Association of Computing Machinery Transactions on Graphics 22 (3): 908-916.

Buck, I. , T. Foley , D. Horn , J. Sugerman , K. Fatabalian , M. Houston , and P. Hanrahan . 2004. Brook for GPUs: Stream computing on graphics hardware. ACM Transactions on Graphics 23 (3): 777-786.

May, J. , and M. E. Van Zee . 1983. Electro optical and infrared sensors. Microwave Journal, September, 121-131.

Harris, M. 2005. Mapping computational concepts to GPUs. In GPU Gems 2: Programming techniques for high-performance graphics and general-purpose computation, edited by M. Pharr , 493-508. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Buck, I. 2005. Taking the plunge into GPU computing. In GPU Gems 2: Programming techniques for high-performance graphics and general-purpose computation, edited by M. Pharr , 509-519. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Pharr, M. , ed. 2005. GPU Gems 2: Programming techniques for high-performance graphics and general-purpose computation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Gray, K. 2003. The Microsoft DirectX 9 programmable graphics pipeline. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press.

10.

Larsen, E. S. , and D. McAllister . 2001. Fast matrix multiplies using graphics hardware. In The International Conference for High Performance Computing and Communications—SC2001, November, Denver, CO.