Accelerating an Imaging Spectroscopy Algorithm Using GPUs

Graphics Processing Units(GPUs) have proven to be highly effective at accelerating processing speed for a large range of scientific and general purpose applications. As data needs increase, and more complex data analysis methods are used, the processing requirements for solving scientific problems also correspondingly increase. The massive parallel processing power of GPUs can be harnessed and used alongside multi-core CPUs to address these increased needs and allow acceleration of scientific algorithms to open up new realms of possibilities. As an example, there are many scientific problems that require solving non-linear optimization problems of multiple variables across large arrays of data. These types of problems are classified as highly difficult and require a great deal of computational time to solve using traditional techniques. By utilizing modern local optimization techniques, such as the iterative quasiNewton algorithms, and combining them with the computational throughput of a CPU-GPU heterogeneous computing platform, we can greatly decrease the processing time required to solve scientific problems of this form.