Project archive

IPCC – Intel Parallel Computing Center

Funding source: Intel

Project duration: 1.4.2014 – 31.6.2018

Project website: https://software.intel.com/en-us/ipcc

 

What we are doing:

The Intel Parallel Computing Center (IPCC) at CSC is a collaborative effort aimed at code modernisation of key scientific codes for Finnish computational science. In collaboration with Intel, we have explored cutting-edge processor architectures and adapted scientific codes to utilise them more efficiently.

To reflect current trends in hardware development, the code modernisation efforts have focused on improving vectorisation and threading to take advantage of the new improved vector sets (AVX-512) and the increasing number of cores per CPU. Energy efficiency of scientific codes has also been looked into using state-of-the-art energy measurement prototypes developed in collaboration with PRACE.

The scientific codes come from a wide range of scientific fields and represent a large segment of the computational work done at CSC: Vlasiator (atmospheric science), Elmer (multiphysics), Elmer/Ice (glaciology), GPAW (material and nanoscience), Elmfire (fusion and plasma physics), and others. A close collaboration with the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Atmospheric Science and other Finnish research groups have supported the work and the optimisation results are expected to benefit many research groups in Finland and abroad.

In addition to the optimisation work, CSC develops and carries out a comprehensive training program to support the learning of HPC programming and optimisation skills. In collaboration with Intel, specific courses that e.g. dive deep into optimisation and threading techniques have been given at CSC to support the code modernisation efforts of scientists.