Towards Targeting Multiple HPC Architectures with IFS Physics
Presenter
Event Type
Minisymposium
Climate and Weather
TimeWednesday, 12 June 201913:30 - 14:00
LocationHG D 1.1
DescriptionThe increasing complexity and diversity of HPC architectures demands a sustainable strategy to migrate existing operational weather prediction codes to a flexible infrastructure that is able to cope with multiple programming models and versatile hardware characteristics. Modern software engineering techniques can be used to achieve this synergy between performance and flexibility, even within the constraints of operational codes, through the use of libraries, automated code generation and domain-specific languages (DSL). In this talk we present parts of the technological roadmap for the ECWMF IFS towards multi-architecture capabilities with particular focus on physical parameterizations. We highlight some of the software technologies used to facilitate an approach based on "evolution" via source-to-source translation rather than the "revolution" of a full rewrite. We show preliminary performance results for a standalone cloud microphysics parameterization on multiple HPC architectures, including GPU and FPGA, and demonstrate a software toolchain to generalize the approach to a wide range of physical parameterizations before highlighting the importance of flexible data layout management for weather prediction software.