ICCAD’17, Hammamet - Tunisia, January 19-21, 2017

Parallel implementation of Sobel filter using

Hana Ben Fredj
Faculty of ScienceMonastir,
University of MonastirTunisia
ben.fredj.hanaa@gmail.com
CUDA
Mouna Ltaif
National School of Engineers,
University of Sousse, Tunisia
ltf.mouna@gmail.com
Anis Ammar
National School of Engineers,
University of Sousse, Tunisia
anis.ammarr@gmail.com
Chokri Souani
Laboratory of Microelectronics
and Instrumentation, Faculty of
Sciences of Monastir, Tunisia
Higher Institute of Applied
Sciences & Technology,
University of Sousse, Tunisia
chokri.souani@gmail.com

Abstract—Efficient solutions must be considered, in order to
solve the problem of intensive computing of the image processing
applications and to achieve high real-time performance. The
graphics processing unit (GPU) is an effective and the most
recent method used for accelerating extensive calculation
algorithms to reduce the execution time by exploiting the power
of parallel programming techniques and to obtain the highest
performance. In this paper, we present a parallel GPU
implementation of an edge detection algorithm with a Sobel
operator using CUDA (Compute Unifies Architecture)
environment. Furthermore, we analyze and prove the high
performance of GPU implementation, by testing the algorithm
on a standard central processing unit (CPU) to compare the
computational efficiency of these systems. Our experimental
results show that the effectiveness of the GPU implementation by
its higher performances compared to sequential calculation.
Keywords— Cuda, edge detection, GPU, parallel implementation.
I. Introduction
The Sobel operator is extensively used in image and
video processing, mainly in edge detection algorithms for
various applications. In medical science, edge detection is a
beneficial and useful method to develop secure medical
imaging information [1]. Also, it is a well-known first step in
several computer vision and pattern recognition applications
[2] because it includes useful information and gives accurate
results.
Some work of edge detection algorithms have been
described in several previous papers using the Sobel detector
such as in [3][4][5]. In fact, this detector is a simple and
efficient operator that uses convolution matrix. Many image
processing algorithms need an intensive of calculation
operations. Moreover, the traditional methods used for large
resolution image processing cannot achieve the real-time
requirement. However, the GPU has become one of the ideal
solutions to accelerate data parallel computing. In fact, it is
used for general-purpose, since it is characterized by a high
computational power. Thus, in the literature there are several
works have been implemented on the parallel processor GPU
with an interesting result. As an illustration, Yang et al [6]
implemented several classical algorithms of image processing
on the GPU with CUDA. Also, OpenVIDIA [7] included a
collection of implementations of computer vision algorithms
on a graphic processor using CUDA environment.
In [8], the authors described a GPU based on segmenting
images with gradient-based edge detection. Luo et al. [9]
proposed a GPU implementation based on the wavelet method.
GPU has also been applied to the medical world in the
applications of segmentation and reconstruction MRI images
[10][11]. In addition, there are some work developed real-time
face detection and recognition applications on GPU and these
are much faster than others implemented on CPU, such as in
[12][13].
In this category, we choose to implement the Sobel detector
application on parallel graphic processor.
The selected hardware architecture for our parallel
implementation is the CUDA. This is a novel general purpose
parallel computing architecture that provides the parallel
NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), to solve many
involved computational problems in a more efficient way
compared to CPU.
In fact, in this paper we study an implementation of the
Sobel filter detector using the CUDA environment. We have
proposed a simple and detailed model of CUDA
implementation. It allows reducing time execution by
comparing to the performance program code executed on a
sequential processor (CPU).
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: we
first provide a brief review of the Sobel filter detector in
section II. Then, we describe the programming model and the
CUDA architecture in section III. In section IV, we display
our experimental results and we conclude with section V.
II. Algorithm Background
A. The Sobel Filter
The Sobel operator measures the gradient of an input
grayscale 2D image. In fact, both of the 3 × 3 convolution
masks are used to compute the horizontal gradient and the
vertical gradient .

978-1-5090-5987-4/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 209

By considering "I" an image source, the approximations of
gradients are calculated as follows:

-1 0 1

= -2 0 1 ×I (1)

-1 0 1

-1 -2 -1

= 0 0 0 ×I (2) Fig. 1. CUDA Programming Model [14]

1 2 1 B. Proposed Model
In this section, we present a model image processing on a
At each point, the approximate horizontal and vertical GPU, which allows performing edge detection application
gradients can be combined to get an approximation of the using the Sobel filter. Thus, this model is characterized by a
gradient G, as follows. The Gradient magnitude is given by: hybrid CPU-GPU approach based on CUDA parallel
processing and the library “OpenCV” to read input image and
display the results. Hence, this model allows loading,
G=
2
+ 2 (3) processing and displaying images on graphics processors as
shown in Fig.2.

III. CUDA Programming Model This model compries four essential steps. First, the host
(CPU) loads the input image and stores it in a host memory.
A. CUDA programming model Then, the input data will be transferred from CPU memory to
GPU memory. Next, follows the allocation of threads to
The Graphic processors have especially a massively process the data and to execute the main kernel of the edge
parallel cores structure. In order to exploit the graphic detection function on the GPU. Finally, the results will be
processor efficiently by providing faster access to data, we returned to the host memory to expose the processing results
have used the NVIDIA CUDA environment. performed on the Graphic Processor.
CUDA is a parallel processing architecture developed by
NVIDIA. It is widely used in general purpose computation
and utilizes a high-level language compatible with C/C++.
Each CUDA program includes two main parts: a CPU code
called the GPU, and a CUDA code is known as a kernel
executed in parallel on GPU. CUDA functions allow the
programmer to define the number of threads executed by a
kernel on GPU.
Moreover, the threads executed on the GPU are grouped
into blocks; the set of blocks represents the computing grid
GPU as shown in Fig.1. The input images that will be
processed in this study are 2D images. So we chose 2D blocks
for our implementation.

Fig. 2. Flowchart of CUDA implementation

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 IV. Experiment Results
The experiments were carried out on an Intel Core i7-
5500U CPU with 8GB of main memory. The NVidia GeForce
920M is characterized by 384 CUDA Cores and 4GB of the
graphic memory. The operating system was Linux 64-bit with
OpenCV 3.0.0 for image and video manipulation. The version
of the CUDA Driver Runtime was 7.5. Both implementations
were performed using Qt Creator tools. The CPU
implementation was carryed out using C++ language.
Fig.3 shows the original image and the resulting parallel
Sobel edge detection image, which is calculated by the
parallel GPU program.
The following section, presents the execution time of the
different steps described below:
Step1: Copy input data from CPU memory to GPU memory
Step2: Load the GPU program and execute Kernel.
Step3: Copy results from the GPU memory to the CPU
memory.
Fig.5 shows that access to the memory for reading/writing
dates from/to the GPU memory occupies 81 percent of the
total filter time, which retards execution time.

44% 37%
step1
step2
19% step3

Fig. 5. Percentage of execution time for every step for the Sobel
Original test image Sobel edge detection
Operator function in the GPU
result
(Size 256*256 pixels)
Moreover, the block size is an important parameter of
computational time. Hence, we propose here to study the
Fig. 3. Sobel edge detection result
influence of the block size on the measurement of execution
In this paper, to express the performance of this work, we time. In fact, CUDA functions allow the programmer to define
give a comparative analysis of execution time for edge the number of kernel threads which are running on GPU.
detection function implementation between the GPU and CPU, However, the number of threads can largely exceed the
by varying the size of the image. Fig.4 shows the results which number of processing units.
indicate the performance of the GPU, is more important than
those of the CPU. We also notice as the image size increases, On the other hand, we define square blocks of size n. The
CPU execution time increases rapidly for the 512*512 and following Fig.6 presents the consumed execution time,
1024*1024 size images, meanwhile for the GPU, it does not according to the block size. The lowest execution time is
increase overly. obtained for blocks 32 * 32 when running the Sobel edge
detection function on the GPU. It is necessary to choose the
100 blocks size well to achieve high performance.
Execution time(ms)

90
80
70 2
Execution time (ms)

60
50 1.5
40
30 GPU
20 1
10 CPU
0
0.5

0
1*1 2*2 4*4 8*8 16*16 32*32
image size (pixels)
Block size
Fig. 4. Execution time for edge detection function on GPU and CPU
Fig. 6. Influence of block size on the GPU execution time.

211
 [12] S.J. Bhutekar, and A.K. Manjaramkar, “Parallel face Detection and
Recognition on GPU,” International Journal of Computer Science and
Information Technologies, vol. 5, pp. 2013-2018, 2014.
V. Conclusion [13] T. Nguyen, D. Hefenbrock, J. Oberg, R. Kastner, and S. Baden, “A
software-based dynamic-warp scheduling approach for load-balancing
the Viola–Jones face detection algorithm on GPUs,” Journal of Parallel
We have presented in this paper, a GPU implementation of and Distributed Computing. vol. 73, pp. 677–685, 2013.
[14] NVIDIA CUDA Programming Guidehttp://www.developer.nvidia.com
the Sobel algorithm that achieves higher performance / nvidia-gpu-computing-documentation.
compared to the CPU sequential implementation. In fact, we
have used the CUDA environment to exploit the power of
GPU component and “OpenCV” library to read input image
and to display the results. Our experimental results indicate
that our model can perform parallel computation with much
less time and provide a significant acceleration than the CPU.
Obviously, we conclude that GPU provides a novel and
efficient acceleration technique for image processing. As a
further research, we will also implement more complex image
processing algorithms into the GPU by using the suitable
memory type (global, shared and texture) to reduce memory
access. Furthermore, we will focus to optimize CUDA
programming by a better exploitation of the resources
provided by the GPU to achieve important performance.

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