Performance Evaluation of Lattice-Boltzmann MagnetohydrodynamicsSimulations on Modern Parallel Vector Systems

Conference · Sun Jan 08 23:00:00 EST 2006

OSTI ID:876729

Carter, Jonathan; Oliker, Leonid

The last decade has witnessed a rapid proliferation of superscalarcache-based microprocessors to build high-end computing (HEC) platforms, primarily because of their generality, scalability, and cost effectiveness. However, the growing gap between sustained and peak performance for full-scale scientific applications on such platforms has become major concern in high performance computing. The latest generation of custom-built parallel vector systems have the potential to address this concern for numerical algorithms with sufficient regularity in their computational structure. In this work, we explore two and three dimensional implementations of a lattice-Boltzmann magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) physics application, on some of today's most powerful supercomputing platforms. Results compare performance between the vector-based Cray X1, Earth Simulator, and newly-released NEC SX-8, with the commodity-based superscalar platforms of the IBM Power3, IntelItanium2, and AMD Opteron. Overall results show that the SX-8 attains unprecedented aggregate performance across our evaluated applications.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Director. Office of Science. Advanced ScientificComputing Research
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 876729
• Report Number(s): LBNL--59340; BnR: KJ0102000
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ALGORITHMS
EVALUATION
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
MICROPROCESSORS
PERFORMANCE
PHYSICS
PROLIFERATION
VECTORS
vector lattice-Boltzmann performance