A flexible Patch-based lattice Boltzmann parallelization approach for heterogeneous GPU-CPU clusters

作者：Feichtinger Christian^*; Habich Johannes; Koestler Harald; Hager Georg; Ruede Ulrich; Wellein Gerhard

来源：Parallel Computing, 2011, 37(9): 536-549.

DOI：10.1016/j.parco.2011.03.005

• Lattice Boltzmann method
• MPI
• CUDA
• Heterogeneous computations

Sustaining a large fraction of single GPU performance in parallel computations is considered to be the major problem of CPU-based clusters. We address this issue in the context of a lattice Boltzmann flow solver that is integrated in the WaLBerla software framework. Our multi-GPU implementation uses a block-structured MPI parallelization and is suitable for load balancing and heterogeneous computations on CPUs and CPUs. The overhead required for multi-GPU simulations is discussed in detail. It is demonstrated that a large fraction of the kernel performance can be sustained for weak scaling on InfiniBand clusters, leading to excellent parallel efficiency. However, in strong scaling scenarios using multiple CPUs is much less efficient than running CPU-only simulations on IBM BG/P and x86-based clusters. Hence, a cost analysis must determine the best course of action for a particular simulation task and hardware configuration. Finally we present weak scaling results of heterogeneous simulations conducted on CPUs and CPUs simultaneously, using clusters equipped with varying node configurations.

• 出版日期2011-9