PETSc acceleration on novel architectures

[Matthew Knepley]

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 10:29 PM, Ahmed El Zein <ahmed at azein.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 10:52 -0500, Matthew Knepley wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Ahmed El Zein <ahmed at azein.com> wrote:
> >         On Tue, 2009-04-07 at 10:39 -0500, Matthew Knepley wrote:
> >         > On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Stephen Ball
> >         > <Stephen.R.Ball at awe.co.uk> wrote:
> >         >         Hi
> >         >
> >         >         We are keen to start investigating whether or not
> >         PETSc is
> >         >         suitable for
> >         >         acceleration on novel architectures like GPUs, Cell
> >         >         processors, etc.
> >         >
> >         >         I would very much like to get your opinions on this.
> >         >
> >         >         Do you think such an endeavour is at all feasible
> >         with PETSc?
> >         >         If so,
> >         >         what areas of PETSc do you think our efforts would
> >         best be
> >         >         spent?
> >         >
> >         >         Should we for example focus on matrix operations, or
> >         on
> >         >         specific
> >         >         preconditioners or solvers? Where would be a good
> >         place to
> >         >         start?
> >         >
> >         >         Can you suggest some specific routines/functions in
> >         PETSc that
> >         >         are
> >         >         potential candidates for acceleration?
> >         >
> >         > We are actually already working on this, and I plan on
> >         having a
> >         > PETSc-GPU
> >         > come out at the end of the year.
> >
> >
> >         What language are you using? I would have thought that OpenCL
> >         would be
> >         the best solution. Maybe even rewriting the whole of PETSc in
> >         OpenCL,
> >         targeting both multicore CPUs and a few novel architectures at
> >         the same
> >         time. AMD and NVIDIA are both going to support OpenCL for
> >         their GPUs and
> >         I believe that it will be supported on Intel's larrabee and
> >         the Cell
> >         processor.
> >
> > That is probably a mistake. OpenCL is not mature and only a few
> > operations in
> > PETSc would really benefit.
> I would still be interested in what language you are using for PETSc-GPU
> and what PETSc-GPU is?


I would like to use OpenCL, but CUDA is it right now.

  Matt


>
> Ahmed
> >
> >   Matt
> >
> >
> >         Ahmed
> >
> >
> >         > Therefore, I suggest working on PCs that
> >         > are specific to your problems. People are already doing good
> >         work on
> >         > sparse
> >         > matrices in general, and solvers will see no speedup at all,
> >         since
> >         > they are all
> >         > logic.
> >         >
> >         >    Matt
> >         >
> >         >
> >         >         Regards
> >         >
> >         >         Stephen R. Ball
> >         >         Advanced Technologies
> >         >         HPC
> >         >         DRAS
> >         >         Rm: G17
> >         >         Bldg: E1.1
> >         >         AWE(A)
> >         >         Aldermaston
> >         >         Reading
> >         >         Berkshire
> >         >         ENGLAND
> >         >         RG7 4PR
> >         >         Tel: +44 (0)118 982 4528
> >         >         e-mail: stephen.r.ball at awe.co.uk
> >         >
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> >         >
> >         >
> >         > --
> >         > What most experimenters take for granted before they begin
> >         their
> >         > experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results
> >         to which
> >         > their experiments lead.
> >         > -- Norbert Wiener
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
> > experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which
> > their experiments lead.
> > -- Norbert Wiener
>
>


-- 
What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments
is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments
lead.
-- Norbert Wiener
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