Scalable parallel computation of the translation operator in three dimensions

We propose a novel algorithm for the parallel, distributed-memory computation of the translation operator in the three-dimensional multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA). Sequential algorithms can compute the translation operator with L multipoles and O(L-2) sampling points in O(L-2) time. State-of-the-art hierarchical parallelization schemes of the MLFMA rely on the distribution of radiation patterns and associated translation operators among P = O(L-2) parallel processes, necessitating the development of distributed-memory algorithms for the computation of the translation operator. Whereas a baseline parallel algorithm computes this translation operator in O(L) time, we propose an algorithm that achieves this in only O(log L) time. For large translation operators and a high number of parallel processes, our algorithm proves to be roughly ten times faster than the baseline algorithm

Towards a Mini-App for Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics at Exascale

The smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) technique is a purely Lagrangian method, used in numerical simulations of fluids in astrophysics and computational fluid dynamics, among many other fields. SPH simulations with detailed physics represent computationally-demanding calculations. The parallelization of SPH codes is not trivial due to the absence of a structured grid. Additionally, the performance of the SPH codes can be, in general, adversely impacted by several factors, such as multiple time-stepping, long-range interactions, and/or boundary conditions. This work presents insights into the current performance and functionalities of three SPH codes: SPHYNX, ChaNGa, and SPH-flow. These codes are the starting point of an interdisciplinary co-design project, SPH-EXA, for the development of an Exascale-ready SPH mini-app. To gain such insights, a rotating square patch test was implemented as a common test simulation for the three SPH codes and analyzed on two modern HPC systems. Furthermore, to stress the differences with the codes stemming from the astrophysics community (SPHYNX and ChaNGa), an additional test case, the Evrard collapse, has also been carried out. This work extrapolates the common basic SPH features in the three codes for the purpose of consolidating them into a pure-SPH, Exascale-ready, optimized, mini-app. Moreover, the outcome of this serves as direct feedback to the parent codes, to improve their performance and overall scalability.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 5 tables, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing proceedings for WRAp1

Weak scalability analysis of the distributed-memory parallel MLFMA

Distributed-memory parallelization of the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) relies on the partitioning of the internal data structures of the MLFMA among the local memories of networked machines. For three existing data partitioning schemes (spatial, hybrid and hierarchical partitioning), the weak scalability, i.e., the asymptotic behavior for proportionally increasing problem size and number of parallel processes, is analyzed. It is demonstrated that none of these schemes are weakly scalable. A nontrivial change to the hierarchical scheme is proposed, yielding a parallel MLFMA that does exhibit weak scalability. It is shown that, even for modest problem sizes and a modest number of parallel processes, the memory requirements of the proposed scheme are already significantly lower, compared to existing schemes. Additionally, the proposed scheme is used to perform full-wave simulations of a canonical example, where the number of unknowns and CPU cores are proportionally increased up to more than 200 millions of unknowns and 1024 CPU cores. The time per matrix-vector multiplication for an increasing number of unknowns and CPU cores corresponds very well to the theoretical time complexity

Performance analysis of direct N-body algorithms for astrophysical simulations on distributed systems

We discuss the performance of direct summation codes used in the simulation of astrophysical stellar systems on highly distributed architectures. These codes compute the gravitational interaction among stars in an exact way and have an O(N^2) scaling with the number of particles. They can be applied to a variety of astrophysical problems, like the evolution of star clusters, the dynamics of black holes, the formation of planetary systems, and cosmological simulations. The simulation of realistic star clusters with sufficiently high accuracy cannot be performed on a single workstation but may be possible on parallel computers or grids. We have implemented two parallel schemes for a direct N-body code and we study their performance on general purpose parallel computers and large computational grids. We present the results of timing analyzes conducted on the different architectures and compare them with the predictions from theoretical models. We conclude that the simulation of star clusters with up to a million particles will be possible on large distributed computers in the next decade. Simulating entire galaxies however will in addition require new hybrid methods to speedup the calculation.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Parallel Computin