Journal Article

FZJ-2021-04767

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png Leveraging HPC accelerator architectures with modern techniques — hydrologic modeling on GPUs with ParFlow

Hokkanen, J. (Corresponding author)FZJ* ; Kollet, S.FZJ* ; Kraus, J.FZJ* ; Herten, A.FZJ* ; Hrywniak, M.FZJ* ; Pleiter, D.FZJ*

2021
Baltzer Science Publ. Bussum

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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/29269  doi:10.1007/s10596-021-10051-4

Abstract: Rapidly changing heterogeneous supercomputer architectures pose a great challenge to many scientific communities trying to leverage the latest technology in high-performance computing. Many existing projects with a long development history have resulted in a large amount of code that is not directly compatible with the latest accelerator architectures. Furthermore, due to limited resources of scientific institutions, developing and maintaining architecture-specific ports is generally unsustainable. In order to adapt to modern accelerator architectures, many projects rely on directive-based programming models or build the codebase tightly around a third-party domain-specific language or library. This introduces external dependencies out of control of the project. The presented paper tackles the issue by proposing a lightweight application-side adaptor layer for compute kernels and memory management resulting in a versatile and inexpensive adaptation of new accelerator architectures with little draw backs. A widely used hydrologic model demonstrates that such an approach pursued more than 20 years ago is still paying off with modern accelerator architectures as demonstrated by a very significant performance gain from NVIDIA A100 GPUs, high developer productivity, and minimally invasive implementation; all while the codebase is kept well maintainable in the long-term.

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. Agrosphäre (IBG-3)

Research Program(s):

1. 2173 - Agro-biogeosystems: controls, feedbacks and impact (POF4-217) (POF4-217)
2. ATML-X-DEV - ATML Accelerating Devices (ATML-X-DEV) (ATML-X-DEV)

Appears in the scientific report 2021

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Database coverage:
; ; Clarivate Analytics Master Journal List ; Current Contents - Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences ; DEAL Springer ; Ebsco Academic Search ; Essential Science Indicators ; IF < 5 ; JCR ; Nationallizenz ; SCOPUS ; Science Citation Index Expanded ; Web of Science Core Collection

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