Ice-sheet modelling accelerated by graphics cards
2014; Elsevier BV; Volume: 72; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/j.cageo.2014.07.019
ISSN1873-7803
AutoresC. F. Brædstrup, Anders Damsgaard, David L. Egholm,
Tópico(s)Climate change and permafrost
ResumoStudies of glaciers and ice sheets have increased the demand for high performance numerical ice flow models over the past decades. When exploring the highly non-linear dynamics of fast flowing glaciers and ice streams, or when coupling multiple flow processes for ice, water, and sediment, researchers are often forced to use super-computing clusters. As an alternative to conventional high-performance computing hardware, the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) is capable of massively parallel computing while retaining a compact design and low cost. In this study, we present a strategy for accelerating a higher-order ice flow model using a GPU. By applying the newest GPU hardware, we achieve up to 180× speedup compared to a similar but serial CPU implementation. Our results suggest that GPU acceleration is a competitive option for ice-flow modelling when compared to CPU-optimised algorithms parallelised by the OpenMP or Message Passing Interface (MPI) protocols.
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