SBIR Phase I: FPGA-accelerated 3-D Waveform Inversion For Geophysical Exploration

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This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will investigate the feasibility of ahigh-performance FPGA implementation of full 3-D seismic Waveform Inversion (WFI), themost advanced and resource-demanding seismic imaging application used today in the oil and gasindustry. The objective of WFI is to estimate a model of the Earth?s subsurface that minimizesthe difference between recorded data and synthetic simulated data derived from an iterativelyadjusted Earth model. The computational kernel of WFI is the 3-D wave equation in aheterogeneous medium. This equation is solved repeatedly in a gradient optimization processyielding highly accurate seismic images. The deliverable of the Phase I project will be a novelField Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation of an especially optimized WFI kernelin the form of a socket compliant special-purpose device. In a continuation Phase II project, thePhase I deliverable will be evolved into a prototype full-fledged implementation of WFI,delivering order-of-magnitudes improvements in performance over conventional softwareimplementations on traditional hardware. As microprocessors reach the limits of attainable clockfrequencies and power consumption, there is a growing need in the oil and gas industry to gobeyond conventional computer software/hardware solutions. The proposed project addresses thisneed.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to usher in a new era of low impact,low energy, and much higher-performance computing in the oil and gas industry. FPGAcomputing is likely to become a disruptive technology for geophysical exploration, allowingunprecedented improvements in capability and performance. With the proposed technology, 3-Dseismic data will be processed faster, and used more effectively to characterize and delineate oiland gas reservoirs in extremely complicated geological settings. Furthermore, the proposedtechnology will enable WFI in production settings. The urgent need for this new capability ishighlighted by domestic and foreign oil companies' recent announcements that their maintechnological focus and critical requirements are for increasingly challenging environments. Inthis context, the accurate, higher resolution, and faster seismic imaging enabled by FPGAs willhave economic impact by: (1) improving the odds of finding new deposits of oil and gas, (2)reducing extraction and development costs by providing higher imaging accuracy, (3) increasingthe amount of hydrocarbons recovered, augmenting the national oil and gas reserves, reducingdependence on foreign oil, and benefiting the U.S. economy.