cuFFT

cuFFT is a software library developed by NVIDIA that provides highly optimized Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) routines for use on NVIDIA GPUs. The Fourier Transform is a mathematical tool that decomposes a function into its constituent frequencies. FFTs are a computationally efficient algorithm for calculating the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). cuFFT leverages the massive parallelism of GPUs to significantly accelerate these calculations compared to traditional CPU implementations, especially for large datasets.

The library supports a wide range of FFT sizes, dimensions (1D, 2D, and 3D), and data types, including single-precision and double-precision floating-point numbers, as well as complex numbers. It offers both forward and inverse transforms, and various data layouts. cuFFT is designed to be easy to integrate into existing CUDA applications. Developers can call cuFFT functions directly from their CUDA kernels or host code. The library's performance is often tuned for specific GPU architectures, providing state-of-the-art speed. Applications that benefit from cuFFT include signal processing, image processing, scientific simulations, and data analysis where frequency domain transformations are crucial.