Parallel scaling analysis for explicit solid dynamics in ALEGRA

Technical Report · 18 December 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1957761· OSTI ID:1957761

Niederhaus, John H. J. ^[1]; Drake, Richard R. ^[1]; Luchini, Christopher B. ^[2]

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1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
2. Sci Tac Research Associates, LLC, Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Weak scaling studies were performed for the explicit solid dynamics component of the ALEGRA code on two Cray supercomputer platforms during the period 2012-2015, involving a production-oriented hypervelocity impact problem. Results from these studies are presented, with analysis of the performance, scaling, and throughput of the code on these machines. The analysis demonstrates logarithmic scaling of the average CPU time per cycle up to core counts on the order of 10,000. At higher core counts, variable performance is observed, with significant upward excursions in compute time from the logarithmic trend. However, for core counts less than 10,000, the results show a 3 × improvement in simulation throughput, and a 2 × improvement in logarithmic scaling. This improvement is linked to improved memory performance on the Cray platforms, and to significant improvements made over this period to the data layout used by ALEGRA.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States); Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Army Research Laboratory (USARL); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: NA0003525; AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1957761
• Report Number(s): SAND2015-11038
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING