1. Portable Performance for Many-Core Particle Advection
Scientific Achievement
Particle advection algorithm in VTK-m that achieves portable performance on a wide range of hardware platforms
Significance and Impact
Particle advection is one of the foundational algorithms for analysis and visualization, and a common capability for scientific visualization tools. Our single implementation in VTK-m is executable on both CPU and GPU platforms. The performance compares very favorably to hand-tuned hardware implementations.
Particle advection in fusion simulation: Streamlines generated from the magnetic field in a fusion simulation. The magnetic field is one of the primary drivers in generating fusion in a plasma. Streamlines are a common way of understanding the nature of this magnetic field. (Image Credit: D. Pugmire)
Research Details
The particle advection algorithm was decomposed into a sequence of data parallel primitives that can be executed in VTK-m
Tests were run on three GPU and three CPU hardware configurations at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility
For comparisons, the same tests were run on previously published hardware-specific implementations
TODO
Pugmire, Yenpure, Kim, Kress , Maynard, Childs, Hentschel. “Performance-Portable Particle Advection with VTK-m.” In Eurographics Symposium on Parallel Graphics and Visualization (EGPGV), June 2018.