Permutation-Avoiding FFT-Based Convolution

Abstract

Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) libraries are widely used for evaluating discrete convolutions. Most FFT implementations follow some variant of the Cooley-Tukey framework, in which the transform is decomposed into butterfly operations and index-reversal permutations. While butterfly operations dominate the floating-point operation count, the memory access patterns induced by index-reversal permutations significantly degrade the FFT's arithmetic intensity. When performing discrete convolution, the three sets of index-reversal permutations which occur in FFT-based implementations using Cooley-Tukey frameworks cancel out, thus paving the way to implementations free of any permutation. To the best of our knowledge, such permutation-free variants of FFT-based discrete convolution are not commonly used in practice, making such kernels worth investigating. Here, we look into such permutation-avoiding convolution procedures for multi-dimensional cases within a general radix Cooley-Tukey framework. We perform numerical experiments to benchmark the algorithms presented against state-of-the-art FFT-based convolution implementations. Our results suggest that developers of FFT libraries should consider supporting permutation-avoiding convolution kernels.