Revisiting Intel Xeon Phi optimization of Thompson cloud microphysics scheme in Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model

Jarno Mielikainen; Bormin Huang; Allen Huang

doi:10.1117/12.2196526

20 October 2015 Revisiting Intel Xeon Phi optimization of Thompson cloud microphysics scheme in Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model

Jarno Mielikainen, Bormin Huang, Allen Huang

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9646, High-Performance Computing in Remote Sensing V; 964605 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2196526
Event: SPIE Remote Sensing, 2015, Toulouse, France

Abstract

The Thompson cloud microphysics scheme is a sophisticated cloud microphysics scheme in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The scheme is very suitable for massively parallel computation as there are no interactions among horizontal grid points. Compared to the earlier microphysics schemes, the Thompson scheme incorporates a large number of improvements. Thus, we have optimized the speed of this important part of WRF. Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) ushers in a new era of supercomputing speed, performance, and compatibility. It allows the developers to run code at trillions of calculations per second using the familiar programming model. In this paper, we present our results of optimizing the Thompson microphysics scheme on Intel Many Integrated Core Architecture (MIC) hardware. The Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor is the first product based on Intel MIC architecture, and it consists of up to 61 cores connected by a high performance on-die bidirectional interconnect. The coprocessor supports all important Intel development tools. Thus, the development environment is familiar one to a vast number of CPU developers. Although, getting a maximum performance out of MICs will require using some novel optimization techniques. New optimizations for an updated Thompson scheme are discusses in this paper. The optimizations improved the performance of the original Thompson code on Xeon Phi 7120P by a factor of 1.8x. Furthermore, the same optimizations improved the performance of the Thompson on a dual socket configuration of eight core Intel Xeon E5-2670 CPUs by a factor of 1.8x compared to the original Thompson code.

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Jarno Mielikainen, Bormin Huang, and Allen Huang "Revisiting Intel Xeon Phi optimization of Thompson cloud microphysics scheme in Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model", Proc. SPIE 9646, High-Performance Computing in Remote Sensing V, 964605 (20 October 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2196526

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