Performance Evaluation of Plasma and Astrophysics Applications onModern Parallel Vector Systems
The last decade has witnessed a rapid proliferation ofsuperscalar cache-based microprocessors to build high-endcomputing (HEC)platforms, primarily because of their generality,scalability, and costeffectiveness. However, the growing gap between sustained and peakperformance for full-scale scientific applications on such platforms hasbecome major concern in highperformance computing. The latest generationof custom-built parallel vector systems have the potential to addressthis concern for numerical algorithms with sufficient regularity in theircomputational structure. In this work, we explore two and threedimensional implementations of a plasma physics application, as well as aleading astrophysics package on some of today's most powerfulsupercomputing platforms. Results compare performance between the thevector-based Cray X1, EarthSimulator, and newly-released NEC SX- 8, withthe commodity-based superscalar platforms of the IBM Power3, IntelItanium2, and AMDOpteron. Overall results show that the SX-8 attainsunprecedented aggregate performance across our evaluatedapplications.
- Research Organization:
- Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Director. Office of Science. Office of AdvancedScientific Computing Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 908486
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL--58004; BnR: KJ0102000
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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