Petascale Parallelization of the Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code

Abstract

The Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC) is a global, three-dimensional particle-in-cell application developed to study microturbulence in tokamak fusion devices. The global capability of GTC is unique, allowing researchers to systematically analyze important dynamics such as turbulence spreading. In this work we examine a new radial domain decomposition approach to allow scalability onto the latest generation of petascale systems. Extensive performance evaluation is conducted on three high performance computing systems: the IBM BG/P, the Cray XT4, and an Intel Xeon Cluster. Overall results show that the radial decomposition approach dramatically increases scalability, while reducing the memory footprint - allowing for fusion device simulations at an unprecedented scale. After a decade where high-end computing (HEC) was dominated by the rapid pace of improvements to processor frequencies, the performance of next-generation supercomputers is increasingly differentiated by varying interconnect designs and levels of integration. Understanding the tradeoffs of these system designs is a key step towards making effective petascale computing a reality. In this work, we examine a new parallelization scheme for the Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC) [?] micro-turbulence fusion application. Extensive scalability results and analysis are presented on three HEC systems: the IBM BlueGene/P (BG/P) at Argonne National Laboratory, the Cray XT4 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and an Intel Xeon cluster at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Overall results indicate that the new radial decomposition approach successfully attains unprecedented scalability to 131,072 BG/P cores by overcoming the memory limitations of the previous approach. The new version is well suited to utilize emerging petascale resources to access new regimes of physical phenomena