Accelerating IP routing algorithm using graphics processing unit for high speed multimedia communication

Abstract

This paper presents a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-based implementation of a Bellman-Ford (BF) routing algorithm using NVIDIA’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). In the proposed GPU-based approach, multiple threads run concurrently over numerous streaming processors in the GPU to dynamically update routing information. Instead of computing the individual vertex distances one-by-one, a number of threads concurrently update a larger number of vertex distances, and an individual vertex distance is represented in a single thread. This paper compares the performance of the GPU-based approach to an equivalent CPU implementation while varying the number of vertices. Experimental results show that the proposed GPU-based approach outperforms the equivalent sequential CPU implementation in terms of execution time by exploiting the massive parallelism inherent in the BF routing algorithm. In addition, the reduction in energy consumption (about 99 %) achieved by using the GPU is reflective of the overall merits of deploying GPUs across the entire landscape of IP routing for emerging multimedia communications.