Design space exploration of many-core processors for a high-performance guitar synthesizer

This paper presents a design space exploration of optimal many-core processors for a high-performance guitar synthesizer by quantitatively evaluating the impact of the sample-per-processing element (SPE) ratio, which is the amount of sample data directly mapped to each processing element (or varying the number of processing elements for a fixed sample size) on system performance and efficiency using architectural and workload simulations. The effect of SPE ratio is difficult to analyze because it significantly affects both hardware and software design as the SPE ratio is varied. In addition, the optimal SPE ratio is not typically at either extreme of its range. This paper illustrates the relationship between problem size, SPE ratio and processing element architecture for a target implementation. Experimental results indicate that a SPE in the range of 2,756 to 11,025 (or the number of PEs between 24 and 96) provides the most efficient operation for synthesizing guitar sounds with 6-note polyphony sampled at 44.1 kHz, yielding the highest area and energy efficiencies.