Memory-efficient optimization of gyrokinetic particle-to-grid interpolation for multicore processors

Kamesh Madduri, Samuel Williams, Stéphane Ethier, Leonid Oliker, John Shalf, Erich Strohmaier, Katherine Yelicky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present multicore parallelization strategies for the particle-to-grid interpolation step in the Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC), a 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) application to study turbulent transport in magnetic-confinement fusion devices. Particle-grid interpolation is a known performance bottleneck in several PIC applications. In GTC, this step involves particles depositing charges to a 3D toroidal mesh, and multiple particles may contribute to the charge at a grid point. We design new parallel algorithms for the GTC charge deposition kernel, and analyze their performance on three leading multicore platforms. We implement thirteen different variants for this kernel and identify the best-performing ones given typical PIC parameters such as the grid size, number of particles per cell, and the GTC-specific particle Larmor radius variation. We find that our best strategies can be 2x faster than the reference optimized MPI implementation, and our analysis provides insight into desirable architectural features for high-performance PIC simulation codes.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the Conference on High Performance Computing Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC '09
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
EventConference on High Performance Computing Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC '09 - Portland, OR, United States
Duration: Nov 14 2009Nov 20 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Conference on High Performance Computing Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC '09

Other

OtherConference on High Performance Computing Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC '09
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPortland, OR
Period11/14/0911/20/09

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications

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