A concurrent implementation of the prime factor algorithm on hypercube

The prime factor algorithm (PFA) is an efficient discrete Fourier transform (DFT) computation algorithm in which a one-dimensional DFT is tuned into a multidimensional DFT, consisting of a few short DFTs whose lengths are mutually prime, and then an efficient algorithm is used for the short DFTs. The PFA was implemented on a hypercube using CrOS III communication routines, taking 120 ms to compute the DFT of 5040 complex points using 32 nodes of the Caltech-JPL MARK III Hypercube. It took 105 ms to do a DFT of 4096 complex points using the Cooley-Tukey algorithm with the same hardware configuration. The performance of hypercubes MARK III, NCUBE, and iPSC and the relative importance of communication and calculation are analyzed. With the current communication speed the Cooley-Tukey algorithm performs fast on a massively concurrent processor and the PFA is advantageous when the number of processors is less than 64 or so. The experience with using the PFA also serves as a useful guide to a multidimensional fast Fourier transform implementation using any algorithm