Fast multipole methods on a cluster of GPUs for the meshless simulation of turbulence

R. Yokota, T. Narumi, R. Sakamaki, S. Kameoka, S. Obi, K. Yasuoka

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

44 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Recent advances in the parallelizability of fast N-body algorithms, and the programmability of graphics processing units (GPUs) have opened a new path for particle based simulations. For the simulation of turbulence, vortex methods can now be considered as an interesting alternative to finite difference and spectral methods. The present study focuses on the efficient implementation of the fast multipole method and pseudo-particle method on a cluster of NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT GPUs, and applies this to a vortex method calculation of homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The results of the present vortex method agree quantitatively with that of the reference calculation using a spectral method. We achieved a maximum speed of 7.48 TFlops using 64 GPUs, and the cost performance was near $9.4/GFlops. The calculation of the present vortex method on 64 GPUs took 4120 s, while the spectral method on 32 CPUs took 4910 s.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2066-2078
Number of pages13
JournalComputer Physics Communications
Volume180
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2009 Nov

Keywords

  • Fast multipole method
  • Graphics processing unit
  • Particle method
  • Pseudo-particle method

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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