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Abstract
The use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to accelerate computational kernels has the potential to be great benefit to scientific codes and the HPC community in general. With the recent developments in FPGA programming technology, the ability to port kernels is becoming far more accessible. However, to gain reasonable performance from this technology it is not enough to simple transfer a code onto the FPGA, instead the algorithm must be rethought and recast in a data-flow style to suit the target architecture. In this paper we describe the porting, via HLS, of one of the most computationally intensive kernels of the Met Office NERC Cloud model (MONC), an atmospheric model used by climate and weather researchers, onto an FPGA. We describe in detail the steps taken to adapt the algorithm to make it suitable for the architecture and the impact this has on kernel performance. Using a PCIe mounted FPGA with on-board DRAM, we consider the integration on this kernel within a larger infrastructure and explore the performance characteristics of our approach in contrast to Intel CPUs that are popular in modern HPC machines, over problem sizes involving very large grids. The result of this work is an experience report detailing the challenges faced and lessons learnt in porting this complex computational kernel to FPGAs, as well as exploring the role that FPGAs can play and their fundamental limits in accelerating traditional HPC workloads.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | High Performance Computing |
Subtitle of host publication | ISC High Performance 2019 |
Editors | Weiland Michele, Juckeland Guido, Alam Sadaf, Jagode Heike |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 567-586 |
Number of pages | 20 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-3-030-34356-9 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-3-030-34355-2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 3 Dec 2019 |
Event | ISC19 IXPUG Workshop: Using FPGAs to Accelerate HPC & Data Analytics on Intel-Based Systems - Frankfurt, Germany Duration: 20 Jun 2019 → 20 Jun 2019 |
Publication series
Name | Lecture Notes in Computer Science |
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Publisher | Springer, Cham |
Volume | 11887 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 0302-9743 |
Workshop
Workshop | ISC19 IXPUG Workshop: Using FPGAs to Accelerate HPC & Data Analytics on Intel-Based Systems |
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Abbreviated title | ISC19 IXPUG |
Country/Territory | Germany |
City | Frankfurt |
Period | 20/06/19 → 20/06/19 |
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Exploring the acceleration of the Met Office NERC Cloud model using FPGAs'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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The European Centre of Excellence for Engineering Applications
Parsons, M. (Principal Investigator), Filipiak, M. (Co-investigator) & Graham, P. (Co-investigator)
1/12/18 → 31/05/22
Project: Research
Research output
- 1 Conference contribution
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It's all about data movement: Optimising FPGA data access to boost performance
Brown, N. & Dolman, D., 2 Jan 2020, 2019 IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Heterogeneous High-performance Reconfigurable Computing (H2RC). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, p. 1-10 10 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution
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