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Title: Getting To Exascale: Applying Novel Parallel Programming Models To Lab Applications For The Next Generation Of Supercomputers

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1124806· OSTI ID:1124806
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  1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

As supercomputing moves toward exascale, node architectures will change significantly. CPU core counts on nodes will increase by an order of magnitude or more. Heterogeneous architectures will become more commonplace, with GPUs or FPGAs providing additional computational power. Novel programming models may make better use of on-node parallelism in these new architectures than do current models. In this paper we examine several of these novel models – UPC, CUDA, and OpenCL –to determine their suitability to LLNL scientific application codes. Our study consisted of several phases: We conducted interviews with code teams and selected two codes to port; We learned how to program in the new models and ported the codes; We debugged and tuned the ported applications; We measured results, and documented our findings. We conclude that UPC is a challenge for porting code, Berkeley UPC is not very robust, and UPC is not suitable as a general alternative to OpenMP for a number of reasons. CUDA is well supported and robust but is a proprietary NVIDIA standard, while OpenCL is an open standard. Both are well suited to a specific set of application problems that can be run on GPUs, but some problems are not suited to GPUs. Further study of the landscape of novel models is recommended.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48; AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
1124806
Report Number(s):
LLNL-TR-457671
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English