Article

Parallel Algorithms For The Spectral Transform Method

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Abstract

The spectral transform method is a standard numerical technique for solving par- tial differential equations on a sphere and is widely used in atmospheric circulation models. Re- cent research has identified several promising algorithms for implementing this method on mas- sively parallel computers; however, no detailed comparison of the different algorithms has previ- ously been attempted. In this paper, we describe these different parallel algorithms and report on computational experiments that we have conducted to evaluate their efficiency on parallel com- puters. The experiments used a testbed code that solves the nonlinear shallow water equations on a sphere; considerable care was taken to ensure that the experiments provide a fair compar- ison of the different algorithms and that the results are relevant to global models. We focus on hypercube- and mesh-connected multicomputers with cut-through routing, such as the Intel iPSC/860, DELTA, and Paragon, and the nCUBE/2, but we also indicate how the results extend to other parallel computer architectures. The results of this study are relevant not only to the spectral transform method but also to multidimensional fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) and other parallel transforms.

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... For example, Figure 4 shows two variants for computing the 3D DFT. The first algorithm represents the so-called slab pencil decomposition [19][20][21], where the 3D DFT is decomposed into a 2D DFT followed by a batch of multiple 1D DFTs. The second algorithm represents the pencil-pencil-pencil decomposition [19][20][21], where the 3D DFT is decomposed into three batches of 1D DFTs, where each 1D DFT is applied in the three dimensions. ...
... The first algorithm represents the so-called slab pencil decomposition [19][20][21], where the 3D DFT is decomposed into a 2D DFT followed by a batch of multiple 1D DFTs. The second algorithm represents the pencil-pencil-pencil decomposition [19][20][21], where the 3D DFT is decomposed into three batches of 1D DFTs, where each 1D DFT is applied in the three dimensions. The slab-pencil decomposition views the input (output) column vectors x (y) as 2D matricesx (ỹ) of size (n 0 n 1 ) ×n 2 . ...
... Under this assumption, the p processors are connected via a hyper-cube topology and the communication requires loд(p) stages, where each two processors exchange n 2p data points. Equation 20 represents the lower bound of the all-to-all collective if a bucket algorithm is used. Given this implementation, the p processors are connected via ring topology, where each processor has a left and a right neighbor. ...
Preprint
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Multi-dimensional discrete Fourier transforms (DFT) are typically decomposed into multiple 1D transforms. Hence, parallel implementations of any multi-dimensional DFT focus on parallelizing within or across the 1D DFT. Existing DFT packages exploit the inherent parallelism across the 1D DFTs and offer rigid frameworks, that cannot be extended to incorporate both forms of parallelism and various data layouts to enable some of the parallelism. However, in the era of exascale, where systems have thousand of nodes and intricate network topologies, flexibility and parallel efficiency are key aspects all multi-dimensional DFT frameworks need to have in order to map and scale the computation appropriately. In this work, we present a flexible framework, built on the Redistribution Operations and Tensor Expressions (ROTE) framework, that facilitates the development of a family of parallel multi-dimensional DFT algorithms by 1) unifying the two parallelization schemes within a single framework, 2) exploiting the two different parallelization schemes to different degrees and 3) using different data layouts to distribute the data across the compute nodes. We demonstrate the need of a versatile framework and thus a need for a family of parallel multi-dimensional DFT algorithms on the K-Computer, where we show almost linear strong scaling results for problem sizes of 1024^3 on 32k compute nodes.
... Communication cost model. All of our analysis makes use of a commonlyused [16,31,8,3,14] communication cost model that is as useful as it is simple: each process is assumed to only be able to simultaneously send and receive a single message at a time, and, when the message consists of n units of data (e.g., double-precision floating-point numbers), the time to transmit such a message between any two processes is α + βn [19,2]. The α term represents the time required to send an arbitrarily small message and is commonly referred to as the message latency, whereas 1/β represents the number of units of data which can be transmitted per unit of time once the message has been initiated. ...
... While this may seem overly restrictive, a large class of important transforms falls into this category, most notably: the Fourier transform, where Φ(x, y) = 2πx · y, backprojection [13], hyperbolic Radon transforms [20], and Egorov operators, which then provide a means of efficiently applying Fourier Integral Operators [7]. Due to the extremely special (and equally delicate) structure of Fourier transforms, a number of highly-efficient parallel algorithms already exist for both uniform [16,26,12] and non-uniform [27] Fourier transforms, and so we will instead concentrate on more sophisticated kernels. We note that the high-level communication pattern and costs of the parallel 1D FFT mentioned in [16] are closely related to those of our parallel 1D butterfly algorithm. ...
... Due to the extremely special (and equally delicate) structure of Fourier transforms, a number of highly-efficient parallel algorithms already exist for both uniform [16,26,12] and non-uniform [27] Fourier transforms, and so we will instead concentrate on more sophisticated kernels. We note that the high-level communication pattern and costs of the parallel 1D FFT mentioned in [16] are closely related to those of our parallel 1D butterfly algorithm. Algorithm 2.3 was instantiated in the new DistButterfly library using blackbox, user-defined phase functions, and the low-rank approximations and translation operators introduced in [7]. ...
Article
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The butterfly algorithm is a fast algorithm which approximately evaluates a discrete analogue of the integral transform \int K(x,y) g(y) dy at large numbers of target points when the kernel, K(x,y), is approximately low-rank when restricted to subdomains satisfying a certain simple geometric condition. In d dimensions with O(N^d) source and target points, when each appropriate submatrix of K is approximately rank-r, the running time of the algorithm is at most O(r^2 N^d log N). A parallelization of the butterfly algorithm is introduced which, assuming a message latency of \alpha and per-process inverse bandwidth of \beta, executes in at most O(r^2 N^d/p log N + (\beta r N^d/p + \alpha)log p) time using p processes. This parallel algorithm was then instantiated in the form of the open-source DistButterfly library for the special case where K(x,y)=exp(i \Phi(x,y)), where \Phi(x,y) is a black-box, sufficiently smooth, real-valued phase function. Experiments on Blue Gene/Q demonstrate impressive strong-scaling results for important classes of phase functions. Using quasi-uniform sources, hyperbolic Radon transforms and an analogue of a 3D generalized Radon transform were respectively observed to strong-scale from 1-node/16-cores up to 1024-nodes/16,384-cores with greater than 90% and 82% efficiency, respectively. These experiments at least partially support the theoretical argument that, given p=O(N^d) processes, the running-time of the parallel algorithm is O((r^2 + \beta r + \alpha)log N).
... The model is based on global hydrostatic primitive equations on sphere and uses the spectral transform method [11,12] in the horizontal directions with the use of the Gaussian grid and the finite-difference method in the vertical direction with the sigma coordinates. It predicts such variables as horizontal winds, temperatures, ground surface pressure, specific humidity, and cloud water. ...
... There have been many algorithms proposed and examined on various computers so far about the parallelization of the spectral transform method [12,13,14]. Here the outline of the Legendre transform (LT) that makes up the core part of the spectral transform will be given by following Foster [12]. ...
... There have been many algorithms proposed and examined on various computers so far about the parallelization of the spectral transform method [12,13,14]. Here the outline of the Legendre transform (LT) that makes up the core part of the spectral transform will be given by following Foster [12]. ...
Conference Paper
A spectral atmospheric general circulation model called AFES (AGCM for Earth Simulator) was developed and optimized for the architecture of the Earth Simulator (ES). The ES is a massively parallel vector supercomputer that consists of 640 processor nodes interconnected by a single stage crossbar network with its total peak performance of 40.96 Tflops was achieved for a high resolution simulation (T1279L96) with AFES by utilizing the full 640-node configuration of the ES. The resulting computing efficiency is 64.9% of the peak performance, well surpassing that of conventional weather/climate applications having just 25-50% efficiency even on vector parallel computers. This remarkable performance proves the effectiveness of the ES as a viable means for practical applications.
... casting systems (Barros et al. 1995). Previous investigations of these methods have focused on the parallel aspects of either shared memory vector implementations (Gärtel et al. 1995), or on the details of distributed memory implementations on MPPs (Foster and Worley 1994;Dent et al. 1995;Hammond et al. 1995). Perhaps because of the communications requirements of transposition-based message passing implementations, and the poor capabilities of commodity interconnect fabrics until quite recently, little attention has been paid to studying the spherical harmonic transform method on commodity clusters. ...
... In order to compute the Legendre polynomials coefficients on the fly using the recurrence relation (15), the paired longitudinal wavenumbers are then distributed across the processing elements (PEs) in contiguous blocks of wavenumbers. We emphasize that, while most previous work has focused on more highly parallel 2D decompositions (Foster and Worley 1994), such fine-grain decompositions require expensive low-latency-high-bandwidth networks, like the Cray T3E. Our strategy here is different. ...
Article
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The practical question of whether the classical spectral transform method, widely used in atmospheric modeling, can be efficiently implemented on inexpensive commodity clusters is addressed. Typically, such clusters have limited cache and memory sizes. To demonstrate that these limitations can be overcome, the authors have built a spherical general circulation model dynamical core, called BOB (''Built on Beowulf''), which can solve either the shallow water equations or the atmospheric primitive equations in pressure coordinates. That BOB is targeted for computing at high resolution on modestly sized and priced commodity clusters is reflected in four areas of its design. First, the associated Legendre polynomials (ALPs) are computed ''on the fly'' using a stable and accurate recursion relation. Second, an identity is employed that eliminates the storage of the derivatives of the ALPs. Both of these algorithmic choices reduce the memory footprint and memory bandwidth requirements of the spectral transform. Third, a cache-blocked and unrolled Legendre transform achieves a high performance level that resists deterioration as resolution is increased. Finally, the parallel implementation of BOB is transposition-based, employing load-balanced, one-dimensional decompositions in both latitude and wavenumber. A number of standard tests is used to compare BOB's performance to two well-known codes—the Parallel Spectral Transform Shallow Water Model (PSTSWM) and the dynamical core of NCAR's Community Climate Model CCM3. Compared to PSTSWM, BOB shows better timing results, particularly at the higher resolutions where cache effects become important. BOB also shows better performance in its comparison with CCM3's dynamical core. With 16 processors, at a triangular spectral truncation of T85, it is roughly five times faster when computing the solution to the standard Held-Suarez test case, which involves 18 levels in the vertical. BOB also shows a significantly smaller memory footprint in these comparison tests.
... The horizontal resolution typically used for climate simulations in the U.S. research community is T85 with 26 vertical levels, which requires a 256 x 128 horizontal grid Worley and Drake 2005] . The parallel algorithm used for these high resolution studies and benchmarking was given in [Foster and Worley 1997]. The FFT algorithm used was given in [Temperton 1983], a Fortran code specifically designed for vector computation of multiple (blocked) fast Fourier transforms. ...
... A performance model of the parallel spectral transform can be developed to estimate the time for a multi-level calculation. The computational operation counts and communication cost estimates are based on a model in [Foster and Worley 1997] for a one dimensional decomposition and modified by Rich Loft (NCAR) to reflect a simple transpose between FFT and Legendre transform phases including vertical levels. The time for the FFT, the Legendre transform and the communication overhead are estimated using machine-dependant rate constants a,b,d, and e. ...
Article
A collection of MATLAB classes for computing and using spherical harmonic transforms is pre-sented. Methods of these classes compute differential operators on the sphere and are used to solve simple partial differential equations in a spherical geometry. The spectral synthesis and analysis algorithms using fast Fourier transforms and Legendre transforms with the associated Legendre functions are presented in detail. A set of methods associated with a spectral field class provides spectral approximation to the differential operators ·, ×, , and 2 in spherical geometry. Laplace inversion and Helmholtz equation solvers are also methods for this class. The use of the class and methods in MATLAB are demonstrated by the solution of the barotropic vorticity equa-tion on the sphere. A survey of alternative algorithms is given and implementations for parallel high performance computers are discussed in the context of global climate and weather models.
... In both estimates and simulations, the transposition strategy appears no less efficient on realistic massively parallel computers than the best alternative static domain decomposition based parallelization strategy. The geometric idea of transposition is illustrated in the pictures in (III), and results of comparison benchmarks are reported in Foster and Worley (1994). In that reference, the authors also develop an elaborate communication strategy for domain decomposition that attains the same asymptotic efficiency as the transposition strategy. ...
... The transposition strategy is the parallelization strategy that in the asymptotic limit has the smallest data volume to communicate of all parallelization strategies for any implicit time stepping scheme, for spectral and grid point models alike, as explained in subsection 5.3.1 above. Since the current research, a thorough analysis and a careful parameterized implementation has been made of the two principal families of parallelization strategies for global atmospheric models -transposition versus static domain decomposition based and , while finding various parallel computers on which each of the numerous versions and combinations of the strategies belonging to each family proves to be the most efficient, the authors find the transposition strategy to be a robust choice on virtually all current computers (Foster and Worley (1994), Worley, Foster and Toonen (1994)). Model benchmarking tests initiated in (III) were expanded to a full two-dimensional version of the IFS model in Gärtel et al. (1994-1), see also Gärtel et al. (1994-2), and eventually to the operational version of IFS (Barros et al. (1994). ...
Article
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Diss. -- Lappeenrannan teknillinen korkeakoulu.
... In this work, we use the transpose algorithm, which has performed better for large sizes in earlier work [8]. Gupta and Kumar [11], and Foster and Worley [9] review both methods. ...
Preprint
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We have implemented fast Fourier transforms for one, two, and three-dimensional arrays on the Cerebras CS-2, a system whose memory and processing elements reside on a single silicon wafer. The wafer-scale engine (WSE) encompasses a two-dimensional mesh of roughly 850,000 processing elements (PEs) with fast local memory and equally fast nearest-neighbor interconnections. Our wafer-scale FFT (wsFFT) parallelizes a $n^3$ problem with up to $n^2$ PEs. At this point a PE processes only a single vector of the 3D domain (known as a pencil) per superstep, where each of the three supersteps performs FFT along one of the three axes of the input array. Between supersteps, wsFFT redistributes (transposes) the data to bring all elements of each one-dimensional pencil being transformed into the memory of a single PE. Each redistribution causes an all-to-all communication along one of the mesh dimensions. Given the level of parallelism, the size of the messages transmitted between pairs of PEs can be as small as a single word. In theory, a mesh is not ideal for all-to-all communication due to its limited bisection bandwidth. However, the mesh interconnecting PEs on the WSE lies entirely on-wafer and achieves nearly peak bandwidth even with tiny messages. This high efficiency on fine-grain communication allow wsFFT to achieve unprecedented levels of parallelism and performance. We analyse in detail computation and communication time, as well as the weak and strong scaling, using both FP16 and FP32 precision. With 32-bit arithmetic on the CS-2, we achieve 959 microseconds for 3D FFT of a $512^3$ complex input array using a 512x512 subgrid of the on-wafer PEs. This is the largest ever parallelization for this problem size and the first implementation that breaks the millisecond barrier.
... The inverse Fourier transform can be easily computed using the forward FFT engine adding a 1/N scaling factor and conjugating the imaginary part; we won't debate the in-31 Chapter 3. Three-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform → P 1 P 0 P 3 P 2 At a global level, with a 2D data domain decomposition, the X transform can proceed independently on each processing node because data on the X dimension of the grid resides entirely in the local host memory and each one has its own assigned portion of the array. When data is non-local, that means that it is divided across processor boundaries, the most efficient approach ( [57], [18]) is to reorganize the data array by a global transposition. This is called the transpose method, in opposition to the distributed method, where the 1D transform is performed in parallel with data exchange occurring at 3.2. ...
Preprint
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In the field of High Performance Computing, communications among processes represent a typical bottleneck for massively parallel scientific applications. Object of this research is the development of a network interface card with specific offloading capabilities that could help large scale simulations in terms of communication latency and scalability with the number of computing elements. In particular this work deals with the development of a double precision floating point complex arithmetic unit with a parallel-pipelined architecture, in order to implement a massively parallel computing system tailored for three dimensional Fast Fourier Transform.
... This can be done in parallel using sequential 1D FFTs. See [7] for alternative parallel methods such as the binary exchange method and a comparison between these methods. ...
Preprint
We present a parallel algorithm for the fast Fourier transform (FFT) in higher dimensions. This algorithm generalizes the cyclic-to-cyclic one-dimensional parallel algorithm to a cyclic-to-cyclic multidimensional parallel algorithm while retaining the property of needing only a single all-to-all communication step. This is under the constraint that we use at most $\sqrt{N}$ processors for an FFT on an array with a total of $N$ elements, irrespective of the dimension $d$ or shape of the array. The only assumption we make is that $N$ is sufficiently composite. Our algorithm starts and ends in the same distribution. We present our multidimensional implementation FFTU which utilizes the sequential FFTW program for its local FFTs, and which can handle any dimension $d$. We obtain experimental results for $d\leq 5$ using MPI on up to 4096 cores of the supercomputer Snellius, comparing FFTU with the parallel FFTW program and with PFFT. These results show that FFTU is competitive with the state-of-the-art and that it allows to use a larger number of processors, while keeping communication limited to a single all-to-all operation. For arrays of size $1024^3$ and $64^5$, FFTU achieves a speedup of a factor 149 and 176, respectively, on 4096 processors.
... Handling the collective communications underlying distributed-memory FFT computation can be achieved using different approaches (refer to [77,78] for more information). The most effective strategy already in use in many high performance FFT libraries is the so-called "the transpose transform". ...
Thesis
The complexity of the physical mechanisms involved in ultra-high intensity laser-plasma interaction requires the use of particularly heavy PIC simulations. At the heart of these computational codes, high-order pseudo-spectral Maxwell solvers have many advantages in terms of numerical accuracy. This numerical approach comes however with an expensive computational cost. Indeed, existing parallelization methods for pseudo-spectral solvers are only scalable to few tens of thousands of cores, or induce an important memory footprint, which also hinders the scaling of the method at large scales. In this thesis, we developed a novel, arbitrarily scalable, parallelization strategy for pseudo-spectral Maxwell's equations solvers which combines the advantages of existing parallelization techniques. This method proved to be more scalable than previously proposed approaches, while ensuring a significant drop in the total memory use.By capitalizing on this computational work, we conducted an extensive numerical and theoretical study in the field of high order harmonics generation on solid targets. In this context, when an ultra-intense (I>10¹⁶W.cm⁻²) ultra-short (few tens of femtoseconds) laser pulse irradiates a solid target, a reflective overdense plasma mirror is formed at the target-vacuum interface. The subsequent laser pulse non linear reflection is accompanied with the emission of coherent high order laser harmonics, in the form of attosecond X-UV light pulses (1 attosecond = 10⁻¹⁸s). For relativistic laser intensities (I>10¹⁹ W.cm⁻²), the plasma surface is curved under the laser radiation pressure. And the plasma mirror acts as a focusing optics for the radiated harmonic beam. In this thesis, we investigated feasible ways for producing isolated attosecond light pulses from relativistic plasma-mirror harmonics, with the so called attosecond lighthouse effect. This effect relies introducing a wavefront rotation on the driving laser pulse in order to send attosecond pulses emitted during different laser optical cycles along different directions. In the case of high order harmonics generated in the relativistic regime, the plasma mirror curvature significantly increases the attosecond pulses divergence and prevents their separation with the attosecond lighthouse scheme. For this matter, we developed two harmonic divergence reduction techniques, based on tailoring the laser pulse phase or amplitude profiles in order to significantly inhibit the plasma mirror focusing effect and allow for a clear separation of attosecond light pulses by reducing the harmonic beam divergence. Furthermore, we developed an analytical model to predict optimal interaction conditions favoring attosecond pulses separation. This model was fully validated with 2D and 3D PIC simulations over a broad range of laser and plasma parameters. In the end, we show that under realistic laser and plasma conditions, it is possible to produce isolated attosecond pulses from Doppler harmonics.
... Several approaches have been considered to efficiently parallelise spectral transforms between physical and spectral space (e.g. Foster & Worley 1997). ...
Preprint
We present a new pseudo-spectral open-source code nicknamed pizza. It is dedicated to the study of rapidly-rotating Boussinesq convection under the 2-D spherical quasi-geostrophic approximation, a physical hypothesis that is appropriate to model the turbulent convection that develops in planetary interiors. The code uses a Fourier decomposition in the azimuthal direction and supports both a Chebyshev collocation method and a sparse Chebyshev integration formulation in the cylindrically-radial direction. It supports several temporal discretisation schemes encompassing multi-step time steppers as well as diagonally-implicit Runge-Kutta schemes. The code has been tested and validated by comparing weakly-nonlinear convection with the eigenmodes from a linear solver. The comparison of the two radial discretisation schemes has revealed the superiority of the Chebyshev integration method over the classical collocation approach both in terms of memory requirements and operation counts. The good parallelisation efficiency enables the computation of large problem sizes with $\mathcal{O}(10^4\times 10^4)$ grid points using several thousands of ranks. This allows the computation of numerical models in the turbulent regime of quasi-geostrophic convection characterised by large Reynolds $Re$ and yet small Rossby numbers $Ro$. A preliminary result obtained for a strongly supercritical numerical model with a small Ekman number of $10^{-9}$ and a Prandtl number of unity yields $Re\simeq 10^5$ and $Ro \simeq 10^{-4}$. pizza is hence an efficient tool to study spherical quasi-geostrophic convection in a parameter regime inaccessible to current global 3-D spherical shell models.
... An introduction and theoretical comparison can be found in [8]. In this paper, we restrict ourselves to transpose algorithms that need much less data to be exchanged [9] and have direct support in many software libraries, e.g. FFTW [5]. ...
Conference Paper
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The 3D fast Fourier transform (FFT) is the heart of many simulation methods. Although the efficient parallelisation of the FFT has been deeply studied over last few decades, many researchers only focused on either pure message passing (MPI) or shared memory (OpenMP) implementations. Unfortunately, pure MPI approaches cannot exploit the shared memory within the cluster node and the OpenMP cannot scale over multiple nodes. This paper proposes a 2D hybrid decomposition of the 3D FFT where the domain is decomposed over the first axis by means of MPI while over the second axis by means of OpenMP. The performance of the proposed method is thoroughly compared with the state of the art libraries (FFTW, PFFT, P3DFFT) on three supercomputer systems with up to 16k cores. The experimental results show that the hybrid implementation offers 10-20% higher performance and better scaling especially for high core counts.
... The CORAL set of benchmark codes [18], intended for HPC vendors, include a set of " Skeleton Benchmarks, " but this term is used to refer to benchmarks that each focus on a specific platform characteristic, unlike our application skeletons. Additional examples are from Kerbyson et al. [19], who used simplified version of parallel MPI applications to study Blue Gene systems; and Worley et al. [20] [21], who studied a parallel spectral transform shallow water model by implementing the real spectral transform in what is otherwise a synthetic code that replicates a range of different communication structures as found in different parallelizations of climate models. Similarly, Prophesy [22] is an infrastructure that helps in performance modeling of applications on parallel and distributed systems through a relational database that allows for the recording of performance data, system features and application details. ...
Article
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Computer scientists who work on tools and systems to support eScience (a variety of parallel and distributed) applications usually use actual applications to prove that their systems will benefit science and engineering (e.g., improve application performance). Accessing and building the applications and necessary data sets can be difficult because of policy or technical issues, and it can be difficult to modify the characteristics of the applications to understand corner cases in the system design. In this paper, we present the Application Skeleton, a simple yet powerful tool to build synthetic applications that represent real applications, with runtime and I/O close to those of the real applications. This allows computer scientists to focus on the system they are building; they can work with the simpler skeleton applications and be sure that their work will also be applicable to the real applications. In addition, skeleton applications support simple reproducible system experiments since they are represented by a compact set of parameters.
... The spectral code is parallelised using a so-called 2-D decomposition (Foster and Worley, 1997;Kanamitsu et al., 2005). In a 2-D decomposition, two of the three dimensions are divided across the processors, and so there is a column and row of processors, with the columns divided across one dimension and the rows across another. ...
Article
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The IGCM4 (Intermediate Global Circulation Model version 4) is a global spectral primitive equation climate model whose predecessors have extensively been used in areas such as climate research, process modelling and atmospheric dynamics. The IGCM4's niche and utility lies in its speed and flexibility allied with the complexity of a primitive equation climate model. Moist processes such as clouds, evaporation, atmospheric radiation and soil moisture are simulated in the model, though in a simplified manner compared to state-of-the-art global circulation models (GCMs). IGCM4 is a parallelised model, enabling both very long integrations to be conducted and the effects of higher resolutions to be explored. It has also undergone changes such as alterations to the cloud and surface processes and the addition of gravity wave drag. These changes have resulted in a significant improvement to the IGCM's representation of the mean climate as well as its representation of stratospheric processes such as sudden stratospheric warmings. The IGCM4's physical changes and climatology are described in this paper.
... The model is similar though not as detailed as the ones in Ayala and Wang [2013], Kerbyson and Barker [2011] and Kerbyson et al. [2013]. Since different runtime FFT algorithms on each machine are used, and since the slab decomposition is used for a small number of process and the pencil decomposition is used for more than 512 processes, and since there are different algorithms for performing an all to all exchange, the best of which will depend on the size of the problem being solved, the computer being used and the number and location of the processors being used on that computer (see Foster and Worley [1997]), a more detailed model is not developed. For small p and fixed N, the runtime decreases close to linearly, and once p is large enough the runtime starts to increase again due to communication costs. ...
Article
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The cubic Klein-Gordon equation is a simple but non-trivial partial differential equation whose numerical solution has the main building blocks required for the solution of many other partial differential equations. In this study, the library 2DECOMP&FFT is used in a Fourier spectral scheme to solve the Klein-Gordon equation and strong scaling of the code is examined on thirteen different machines for a problem size of 512^3. The results are useful in assessing likely performance of other parallel fast Fourier transform based programs for solving partial differential equations. The problem is chosen to be large enough to solve on a workstation, yet also of interest to solve quickly on a supercomputer, in particular for parametric studies. Unlike other high performance computing benchmarks, for this problem size, the time to solution will not be improved by simply building a bigger supercomputer.
... FFTW [15]. In addition, several FFT algorithms have been proposed for distributed machines (for example see [14,36,37]). For computing 3D FFTs, the key challenge is in dividing the data across the processes. ...
Article
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We discuss the fast solution of the Poisson problem on a unit cube. We benchmark the performance of the most scalable methods for the Poisson problem: the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), the Fast Multipole Method (FMM), the geometric multigrid (GMG) and algebraic multigrid (AMG). The GMG and FMM are novel parallel schemes using high-order approximation for Poisson problems developed in our group. The FFT code is from P3DFFT library and AMG code from ML Trilinos library. We examine and report results for weak scaling, strong scaling, and time to solution for uniform and highly refined grids. We present results on the Stampede system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and on the Titan system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In our largest test case, we solved a problem with 600 billion unknowns on 229,379 cores of Titan. Overall, all methods scale quite well to these problem sizes. We have tested all of the methods with different source distributions. Our results show that FFT is the method of choice for smooth source functions that can be resolved with a uniform mesh. However, it loses its performance in the presence of highly localized features in the source function. FMM and GMG considerably outperform FFT for those cases.
... The original model is based on the three- (6) dimensional global hydrostatic primitive equations. The spectral transform method [12] is applied to discretize in the horizontal direction and a finite-difference method in the vertical direction with the use of sigma coordinates. AFES predicts such variables as horizontal winds, temperatures, ground-level pressure, specific humidity, and cloud water at grid points generated around the entire process. ...
Article
Two major developments in the infrastructure of the computational science and engineering research in Japan are reviewed. Both of these developments, resulting from the recent construction of a high-speed backbone network and a huge vector parallel computer, will surely change the scene of the computational science and engineering researches. The first one is the ITBL (Information-Technology Based Laboratory) project, where R&D are made to realize a virtual research environment over the network. Here, basic software tools for distributed environments have been developed to solve science and engineering problems. The second one is the Earth Simulator project. In this project, a huge SMP-cluster vector parallel system was developed, which will undoubtedly give a great impact on the numerical simulations in the areas, for example, the climate modeling. Furthermore, activities in large-scale numerical simulations, which are carried out in various application fields and have a potential for further integration of the above systems, are presented.
... Performance models for a specific given application domain, which presents performance bounds for implicit CFD codes have also been considered [15]. The efficiency of the spectral transform method on parallel computers has been evaluated by Foster [9]. Kerbyson et al. provide an analytical model for the application SAGE [17]. ...
Article
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Exascale systems are predicted to have approximately one billion cores, assuming Gigahertz cores. Limitations on affordable network topologies for distributed memory systems of such massive scale bring new challenges to the current parallel programing model. Currently, there are many efforts to evaluate the hardware and software bottlenecks of exascale designs. There is therefore an urgent need to model application performance and to understand what changes need to be made to ensure extrapolated scalability. The fast multipole method (FMM) was originally developed for accelerating N-body problems in astrophysics and molecular dynamics, but has recently been extended to a wider range of problems, including preconditioners for sparse linear solvers. It's high arithmetic intensity combined with its linear complexity and asynchronous communication patterns makes it a promising algorithm for exascale systems. In this paper, we discuss the challenges for FMM on current parallel computers and future exascale architectures, with a focus on inter-node communication. We develop a performance model that considers the communication patterns of the FMM, and observe a good match between our model and the actual communication time, when latency, bandwidth, network topology, and multi-core penalties are all taken into account. To our knowledge, this is the first formal characterization of inter-node communication in FMM, which validates the model against actual measurements of communication time.
... As mentioned earlier, in a spectral model a full dimension in one of two horizontal directions (East-West [X] and North-South [Y] directions in Fig. 1) is needed for the FFT computation. Similar method has been introduced in several previous studies (Oikawa, 2001;Juang et al., 2001;Foster and Worley, 1997;Barros et al, 1995;Skalin and Biorge, 1997). First, rows along X and Y directions in the spectral space are divided depending on the number of working processors while the vertical column has a full dimension (upper left corner cube in Fig. 1). ...
... In the horizontal direction we use a one-dimensional decomposition. This is in contrast to earlier work on two-dimensional decompostions by Foster and Worley (1994). Although the 2D decomposition allows for a finer grain decomposition this also results in considerably more network traffic, requiring expensive low-latency-high-bandwidth networks. ...
... In the rst part of this section, we discussed machine performance without reference to the algorithms being used on diierent problem size/machine type/machine size conngurations. Yet there is considerable variability in the performance of diierent algorithms (Foster and Worley 1994; Worley and Foster 1994), and average performance would have been considerably worse if we had restricted ourselves to a single algorithm. Factors that can aaect performance include the choice of FFT algorithm, LT algorithm, aspect ratio, the protocols used for data transfer, and memory requirements. ...
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... [31] The transform between physical and Fourier/ Chebyshev space is a global operation which requires communication among the processors. Different approaches have been proposed for the parallelization of such transforms [Foster and Worley, 1997]. Here, we use a transpose-based algorithm. ...
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... This transpose method is named 2-Dimensional decomposition, because one of the dimensions is fixed but the other two are distributed. It has been studied by many authors (e.g., Foster and Worley 1997;Barros et al. 1995;Skalin and Bjorge 1997), and has been widely used in many global spectral models. Since the RSM code structure is very similar to the GSM which uses the transpose method for parallelization, the same method was adopted for RSM parallelization. ...
... Example PSTSWM Input Files a) Problem b) Algorithm c) Measurements sums of spectral harmonics and inverse real FFTs. Each of these steps is presented in mathematical detail in[34]. ...
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... The 2-D decomposition data transposition strategy utilizes a 2-D model data structures, meaning a single dimension of data structure in memory for each processor. This method has been applied successfully in several parallel atmospheric models (Foster and Worley 1997;Barros et al. 1995;Skalin and Bjorge 1997), including the Global Spectral Model. 2-D can be used up to the number of product of two smallest dimensions in all directions and all spaces, except with any prime number of processors (Juang and Kanamitsu 2001). ...
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... These numerical difficulties usually lead to use of the spectral method as in [2]. But the global transposition of data on a network of processors needed in the spectral method makes them difficult to parallelize [5]. ...
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... In this method, one dimension is kept fixed while the other two dimensions are decomposed, and the spectral method can be applied in parallel in the fixed dimension. After this, the system is transposed before applying the algorithm in another direction (13). The Vlasov solver uses periodic boundary conditions in configuration space, where a pseudo-spectral method is employed to calculate derivatives accurately. ...
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We present a parallelized algorithm for solving the time-dependent Vlasov–Maxwell system of equations in the four-dimensional phase space (two spatial and velocity dimensions). One Vlasov equation is solved for each particle species, from which charge and current densities are calculated for the Maxwell equations. The parallelization is divided into two different layers. For the first layer, each plasma species is given its own processor group. On the second layer, the distribution function is domain decomposed on its dedicated resources. By separating the communication and calculation steps, we have met the design criteria of good speedup and simplicity in the implementation.
... The slave tasks contain four distinct phases: data receiving, CPU bound computing, I/O bound computing and data sending (to the master). The second one, namely B, is the PSTSWM (Parallel Spectral Transform Shallow Water Model) [16]. The PSTSWM is a message-passing benchmark code that solves the nonlinear shallow water equations on a rotating sphere using the spectral transform method. ...
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... Instead, a dynamics– physics coupler (dp_coupling) would be used to move data between data structures representing the dynamics state and the physics state. In previous work (Drake et al., 1995Drake et al., , 1999 Foster et al., 1996; Foster and Worley 1997), significant effort has been expended to determine data structures and domain decompositions that work well with both the dynamics and the physics, in order to minimize memory requirements, to avoid the cost of buffer copies, and/or to avoid the cost of interprocess communication when execution moves between the dynamics and the physics during each time step of the algorithm. With the decision to decouple physics and dynamics data structures , a global design was no longer necessarily advantageous . ...
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... In the distributed memory architecture, the remapping procedure implements a global all-to-all exchange of data blocks with size (Nx, Ny/P, Nz/P), where Nx (Ny, Nz) is the number of grid points along the ix (iy, iz) direction, and P is the total number of distributed processors. The global exchange performs essentially a pairwise block exchange where the local 3-D arrays on each processor are viewed as 1-D array of blocks (Bokhari 1991;Foster and Worley 1997). This exchange involves all-toall communication. ...
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This book explains how to use the bulk synchronous parallel (BSP) model to design and implement parallel algorithms in the areas of scientific computing and big data. Furthermore, it presents a hybrid BSP approach towards new hardware developments such as hierarchical architectures with both shared and distributed memory. The book provides a full treatment of core problems in scientific computing and big data, starting from a high-level problem description, via a sequential solution algorithm to a parallel solution algorithm and an actual parallel program written in the communication library BSPlib. Numerical experiments are presented for parallel programs on modern parallel computers ranging from desktop computers to massively parallel supercomputers. The introductory chapter of the book gives a complete overview of BSPlib, so that the reader already at an early stage is able to write his/her own parallel programs. Furthermore, it treats BSP benchmarking and parallel sorting by regular sampling. The next three chapters treat basic numerical linear algebra problems such as linear system solving by LU decomposition, sparse matrix-vector multiplication (SpMV), and the fast Fourier transform (FFT). The final chapter explores parallel algorithms for big data problems such as graph matching. The book is accompanied by a software package BSPedupack, freely available online from the author’s homepage, which contains all programs of the book and a set of test programs.
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Conventional algorithms for computing large one-dimensional fast Fourier transforms (FFTs), even those algorithms recently developed for vector and parallel computers, are largely unsuitable for systems with external or hierarchical memory. The principal reason for this is the fact that most FFT algorithms require at least m complete passes through the data set to compute a 2m -point FFT. This paper describes some advanced techniques for computing an ordered FFT on a computer with external or hierarchical memory. These algorithms (1) require as few as two passes through the external data set, (2) employ strictly unit stride, long vector transfers between main memory and external storage, (3) require only a modest amount of scratch space in main memory, and (4) are well suited for vector and parallel computation. Performance figures are included for implementations of some of these algorithms on Cray supercomputers. Of interest is the fact that a main memory version outperforms the current Cray library FFT routines on the CRAY-2, the CRAY X-MP, and the CRAY Y-MP systems. Using all eight processors on the CRAY Y-MP, this main memory routine runs at nearly two gigaflops.
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Conference Paper
We outline a unified approach for building a library of collective communication operations that performs well on a cross-section of problems encountered in real applications. The target architecture is a two-dimensional mesh with worm-hole routing, but the techniques also apply to higher dimensional meshes and hypercubes. We stress a general approach, addressing the need for implementations that perform well for various sized vectors and grid dimensions, including non-power-of-two grids. This requires the development of general techniques for building hybrid algorithms. Finally, the approach also supports collective communication within a group of nodes, which is required by many scalable algorithms. Results from the Intel Paragon system are included
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Two complete exchange algorithms for meshes are given. The modified quadrant exchange algorithm is based on the quadrant exchange algorithm and it is well suited for square meshes with a power of two rows and columns. The store-and-forward complete exchange algorithm is suitable for meshes of arbitrary size. A pipelined broadcast algorithm for meshes is also presented. This new algorithm, called the double hop broadcast, can broadcast long messages at slightly lower cost than the edge-disjoint fence algorithm because it uses routing trees of lower height. This shows that there is still room for improvement in the design of pipelined broadcast algorithms for meshes
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The scalability of the parallel fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm on mesh- and hypercube-connected multicomputers is analyzed. The hypercube architecture provides linearly increasing performance for the FFT algorithm with an increasing number of processors and a moderately increasing problem size. However, there is a limit on the efficiency, which is determined by the communication bandwidth of the hypercube channels. Efficiencies higher than this limit can be obtained only if the problem size is increased very rapidly. Technology-dependent features, such as the communication bandwidth, determine the upper bound on the overall performance that can be obtained from a P-processor system. The upper bound can be moved up by either improving the communication-related parameters linearly or increasing the problem size exponentially. The scalability analysis shows that the FFT algorithm cannot make efficient use of large-scale mesh architectures. The addition of such features as cut-through routing and multicasting does not improve the overall scalability on this architecture
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The authors present the scalability analysis of a parallel fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm on mesh and hypercube connected multicomputers using the isoefficiency metric. The isoefficiency function of an algorithm architecture combination is defined as the rate at which the problem size should grow with the number of processors to maintain a fixed efficiency. It is shown that it is more cost-effective to implement the FFT algorithm on a hypercube rather than a mesh despite the fact that large scale meshes are cheaper to construct than large hypercubes. Although the scope of this work is limited to the Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm on a few classes of architectures, the methodology can be used to study the performance of various FFT algorithms on a variety of architectures such as SIMD hypercube and mesh architectures and shared memory architecture
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Given a vector of N elements, the perfect shuffle of this vector is a permutation of the elements that are identical to a perfect shuffle of a deck of cards. Elements of the first half of the vector are interlaced with elements of the second half in the perfect shuffle of the vector. We indicate by a series of examples that the perfect shuffle is an important interconnection pattern for a parallel processor. The examples include the fast-Fourier transform (FFT), polynomial evaluation, sorting, and matrix transposition. For the FFT and sorting, the rate of growth of computational steps for algorithms that use the perfect shuffle is the least known today, and is somewhat better than the best rate that is known for versions of these algorithms that use the interconnection scheme used in the ILLIAC IV. Copyright © 1971 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
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This paper investigates the suitability of the spectral transform method for parallel implementation. The spectral transform method is a natural candidate for general circulation models designed to run on large-scale parallel computers due to the large number of existing serial and moderately parallel implementations. We present analytic and empirical studies that allow us to quantify the parallel performance, and hence the scalability, of the spectral transform method on different parallel computer architectures. We consider both the shallow-water equations and complete GCMs. Our results indicate that for the shallow-water equations parallel efficiency is generally poor because of high communication requirements. We predict that for complete global climate models, the parallel efficiency will be significantly better; nevertheless, projected Teraflop computers will have difficulty achieving acceptable throughput necessary for long-term regional climate studies. 1 Introduction Current ...
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The spectral transform method is a standard numerical technique for solving partial differential equations on the sphere and is widely used in global climate modeling. In this paper, we outline different approaches to parallelizing the method and describe experiments that we are conducting to evaluate the efficiency of these approaches on parallel computers. The experiments are conducted using a testbed code that solves the nonlinear shallow water equations on a sphere, but are designed to permit evaluation in the context of a global model. They allow us to evaluate the relative merits of the approaches as a function of problem size and number of processors. The results of this study are guiding ongoing work on PCCM2, a parallel implementation of the Community Climate Model developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. 1 Introduction Parallel algorithms for computing the spectral transform method used in climate models can be divided into two general classes. Tr...
Implementation of the NCAR CCM2 on the Connection Machine
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