High-performance spectral element methods on field-programmable gate arrays : iimplementation, evaluation, and future projection

Karp M, Podobas A, Jansson N, Kenter T, Plessl C, Schlatter P, Markidis S (2021)


Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2021

Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Pages Range: 1077-1086

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings - 2021 IEEE 35th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2021

Event location: Virtual, Online

ISBN: 9781665440660

DOI: 10.1109/IPDPS49936.2021.00116

Abstract

Improvements in computer systems have historically relied on two well-known observations: Moore's law and Dennard's scaling. Today, both these observations are ending, forcing computer users, researchers, and practitioners to abandon the general-purpose architectures' comforts in favor of emerging post-Moore systems. Among the most salient of these post-Moore systems is the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which strikes a convenient balance between complexity and performance. In this paper, we study modern FPGAs' applicability in accelerating the Spectral Element Method (SEM) core to many computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications. We design a custom SEM hardware accelerator operating in double-precision that we empirically evaluate on the latest Stratix 10 GX-series FPGAs and position its performance (and power-efficiency) against state-of-the-art systems such as ARM ThunderX2, NVIDIA Pascal/Volta/Ampere Teslaseries cards, and general-purpose manycore CPUs. Finally, we develop a performance model for our SEM-accelerator, which we use to project future FPGAs' performance and role to accelerate CFD applications, ultimately answering the question: what characteristics would a perfect FPGA for CFD applications have?

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APA:

Karp, M., Podobas, A., Jansson, N., Kenter, T., Plessl, C., Schlatter, P., & Markidis, S. (2021). High-performance spectral element methods on field-programmable gate arrays : iimplementation, evaluation, and future projection. In Proceedings - 2021 IEEE 35th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2021 (pp. 1077-1086). Virtual, Online: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc..

MLA:

Karp, Martin, et al. "High-performance spectral element methods on field-programmable gate arrays : iimplementation, evaluation, and future projection." Proceedings of the 35th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2021, Virtual, Online Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2021. 1077-1086.

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