Implementation of the macro and micro mechanical cochlea model in a GPU

For a long time, cochlea models have been an interesting area of study for scientists in different fields such as medicine, especially in otorhinolaryngology, physics and acoustic engineering, among others. That is because, in mammals, this organ is the most important element in the transduction of the sound pressure that is received by the outer and middle ear. In this paper we present a method to simulate the macro and micro mechanical model developed by Neely [3], using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). We use a linear model for the cochlea that has produced results close to those obtained by Von Bèkesy. The principal characteristic of this cochlea model is that is a linear representation of the cochlea, being one of the most important models found in the literature, producing results close to those of Von Bèkesy, pioneer in the analysis and study of the human cochlea. We use the finite difference method to discretize the ordinary differential equations (ODEs) that represents the properties of the mass, stiffness and damping of the cochlea, specifically of the Corti Organ, also named the micro mechanical model of the cochlea. We use Thomas’ algorithm to invert the matrix obtained from the discretization, and we implement both, a serial and a parallel algorithm for the numerical solution. We obtain a speedup of 284.09 and an efficiency of 0.568.