Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

FAMOUS, faster: using parallel computing techniques to accelerate the FAMOUS/HadCM3 climate model with a focus on the ratiative transfer algorithm

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Hiro Yamazaki

Downloads

Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.


Abstract

We have optimised the atmospheric radiation algorithm of the FAMOUS climate model on several hardware platforms. The optimisation involved translating the Fortran code to C and restructuring the algorithm around the computation of a single air column. A task queue and a thread pool are used to distribute the computation to several pro- cessors. Finally, four air columns are packed together in a single data structure and computed simultaneously using Single Instruction Multiple Data operations. The modified algorithm runs more than 50 times faster on the CELL’s Synergistic Pro- cessing Elements than on its main PowerPC processing element. On Intel-compatible processors, the new radiation code runs 4 times faster and on graphics processors, using OpenCL, more than 2.5 times faster, as compared to the original code. Because the radiation code takes more than 60 % of the total CPU time, FAMOUS executes more than twice as fast. Our version of the algorithm returns bit-wise identical results, which demonstrates the robustness of our approach.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Hanappe P, Beurive A, Laguzet F, Steels L, Bellouin N, Boucher O, Yamazaki YH, Aina T, Allen M

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Geoscientific Model Development Discussions

Year: 2011

Volume: 4

Issue: 2

Pages: 1273-1303

Print publication date: 17/06/2011

ISSN (print): 1991-9611

ISSN (electronic): 1991-962X

Publisher: Copernicus GmbH

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/gmdd-4-1273-2011

DOI: 10.5194/gmdd-4-1273-2011


Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric


Share