An electronic inverter

of the radiative transfer

equation
J.C. del Toro Iniesta, J.P. Cobos Carrascosa, J.L. Ramos Más, B.
Aparicio del Moral, A.C. López Jiménez, M. Balaguer Jiménez,
D. Orozco Suárez

SPG @ IAA-CSIC

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

I. Introduction

Inversion of the RTE

Main astrophysical problem
Observables space
Mapping between two spaces
Observables (Stokes profiles)
Object’s physical quantities Object’s pq space

Success depends on astronomer’s skills

Description of the two spaces and the mapping
Astrophysics is an “art”: lack of uniqueness

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

I. Introduction

Inversion is robust (Del Toro Iniesta & Ruiz Cobo, 2016)

A step-by-step process is feasible and reliable
Classical formulae useful to initialize
Increasing degree of complexity
Observables
Physical quantities
Correspondence among observables and
physical quantities
Milne-Eddington atmosphere’s good starting
point
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
I. Introduction

Milne-Eddington inversion
First proposal (NSO; Harvey et al. 1972)
First code based on Unno’s equation (Auer et al. 1977)
later generalized by (Landolfi et al. 1984)
First successful application (Boulder; Skumanich & Lites
1985, Lites & Skumanich 1985, Skumanich et al. 1985, 1987)

Extensively used
Reliable (Westendorp Plaza et al. 1998, Orozco Suárez et al. 2010)
Useful for diagnostics (analytic) (Orozco Suárez & Del Toro
Iniesta, 2007)

Magnetic and dynamic results independent of

“thermodynamic parameters”
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
I. Introduction

Milne-Eddington approximation
Assumption of choice for SO/PHI
Must do inversions on board
Few observables (6 𝜆’s x 4 Stokes par.) ➜
few free parameters (9)
Analytic character ➜ easy programming
Unavailability of space-qualified processors
or DSPs ➜ specifically tailored FPGA
Architecture dependence on the device
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
I. Introduction

Development steps
Starting point: MILOS code in IDL
(Orozco Suárez & Del Toro Iniesta, 2007)

Optimization to C: C-MILOS
Extensive tests
Initialization
Labview graphical description
Specific SW to build the FPGA
architecture: TAPAS
Two architectures for an
embarrassingly parallel problem:
MIMD for Virtex 5
SIMD for Virtex 4
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
I. Introduction

Development steps
Starting point: MILOS code in IDL
(Orozco Suárez & Del Toro Iniesta, 2007)

Optimization to C: C-MILOS
Extensive tests
Initialization
Labview graphical description
Specific SW to build the FPGA
architecture: TAPAS
Two architectures for an
embarrassingly parallel problem:
MIMD for Virtex 5
SIMD for Virtex 4
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
I. Introduction

Development steps
Starting point: MILOS code in IDL
(Orozco Suárez & Del Toro Iniesta, 2007)

Optimization to C: C-MILOS
-2
Extensive tests
-3
Initialization
-4
Labview graphical description

log10 (𝜒2)
Specific SW to build the FPGA -5

architecture: TAPAS -6

Two architectures for an -7

embarrassingly parallel problem: 0 10
Iteration number
20 30

MIMD for Virtex 5

SIMD for Virtex 4
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
I. Introduction

Basic building blocks

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

I. Introduction

Basic building blocks

Model parameter modification
No

Synthetic Yes
Model Propagation matrix Radiative transfer Stokes Final model
Convergence
atmosphere and source function equation parameters and atmosphere
RFs

Observations

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

I. Introduction

Basic building blocks

Model parameter modification
No

Synthetic Yes
Model Propagation matrix Radiative transfer Stokes Final model
Convergence
atmosphere and source function equation parameters and atmosphere
RFs

Observations

SYNTHESIS AND RESPONSE FUNCTIONS

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

I. Introduction

Basic building blocks

Model parameter modification
No

Synthetic Yes
Model Propagation matrix Radiative transfer Stokes Final model
Convergence
atmosphere and source function equation parameters and atmosphere
RFs

Observations

SYNTHESIS AND RESPONSE FUNCTIONS SVD

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

I. Introduction

Basic building blocks

Model parameter modification
No

Synthetic Yes
Model Propagation matrix Radiative transfer Stokes Final model
Convergence
atmosphere and source function equation parameters and atmosphere
RFs

Observations

SYNTHESIS AND RESPONSE FUNCTIONS SVD

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

 I. Introduction

Telemetry and compression

Available telemetry: 20 kb/s Data production rate:
51.2 Mb/s
On-board data compression factor: 33.4!

24 raw images 4 or 5 science images

Detector Pre-processing RTE inversion Compression To ground

3 Gbit 3 Gbit 320 Mbit 92 Mbit

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

II. FPGA architecture

FPGA architecture
No useful embedded processor
within FPGA
Leon 3 & NIOS II (Tong,
2006)
Leon 3 (57 WMIPS) vs Intel
Xeon (1000 WMIPS (Learn,
2011)
Virtex 4 Virtex 5
Only a few processors in
Virtex 4 or 5 (Learn, 2011)
Tailored FPGA
Our problem is an embarrass-
ingly parallel problem
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
II. FPGA architecture

SIMD multi-core architecture

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

II. FPGA architecture

SIMD multi-core architecture

Each nProcessor uses its local
memory and runs the synthesis and
RF calculation block
No data exchange among
nProcessors
Each for one pixel (no spatial
dependencies)
IEEE 754 floating point precision
Special operations (division, square
root, trigonometric) executed in the
Shared Operations Block
They’re used a few times
They occupy significant resources
SVD is carried out in the SOB
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
II. FPGA architecture

SIMD multi-core architecture

Each nProcessor uses its local
memory and runs the synthesis and
RF calculation block
No data exchange among
nProcessors
Each for one pixel (no spatial
dependencies)
IEEE 754 floating point precision
Special operations (division, square
root, trigonometric) executed in the
Shared Operations Block
They’re used a few times
They occupy significant resources
SVD is carried out in the SOB
An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017
II. FPGA architecture

FPGA occupation

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

III. Results

Numerical experiments

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

III. Results

CRISP data inversion

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017

III. Results

CRISP data inversion

An electronic inverter of the radiative transfer equation. Boulder, February 2017