Just a reminder of tomorrow's IIC Colloquium with Lorena Barba:
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Toward GPU-Accelerated Meshfree Fluids Simulation Using the Fast
Multipole Method
November 4, 2009, 4:00 pm
Room G115, Maxwell Dworkin, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Lorena A. Barba
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University
Abstract
For the better part of the past 50 years, advances in algorithms and
increasing computing power have made computational fluid dynamics,
CFD, a mature discipline. What are some remaining frontiers of the
discipline? One of the challenges in fluid simulation continues to be
the need to straddle many scales. New computational methods still need
to be developed that are able to adapt to the many scales of a
problem. Another frontier recently opened is the development of
hardware-aware software. Multi-core computers are on everyone’s
desktop nowadays, and a growing trend in using graphics cards and
other specialized hardware is buzzing.
On both these frontiers, there is great potential for meshfree
methods. Particle-type formulations for CFD offer an alternative which
is low in numerical diffusion, devoid of numerical dispersion and
stability constraints. Meshfree methods offer a natural adaptivity in
situations where mesh generation is a large burden. And meshfree
methods could be especially well suited to exploit the new hardware
technologies entering the scene.
I will present an overview of a particle-type formulation for fluid
dynamics, the vortex method. This method requires an N-body solver
within it, for which we use the fast multipole method. In our goal of
obtaining hardware acceleration for this method, I’ll describe our
progress with the fast multipole method, where we currently achieve
480 gigaflops for a hundred-fold speedup on a GPU card.
Bio
Lorena Barba obtained her Ph.D. in aeronautics from California
Institute of Technology in 2004. She then joined the Department of
Mathematics at the University of Bristol, UK. There, she was the
leader of an EC-funded international project titled "Scientific
Computing Advanced Training" involving 10 institutions in Europe and
Latin America. The project allowed more than 30 young aspiring
scientists to spend an extended period immersed in a research group in
Europe. In the fall of 2008, she started a new position as Assistant
Professor of Mechanical Engineering in Boston University. Her research
as a computational scientist and a fluid dynamicist covers particle
methods used for fluid simulation, the development of fast and
efficient algorithms, the use of novel computer architectures, as well
as fundamental and applied aspects of fluid dynamics.
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Refreshments will be served at 3:45 pm.
Mark your calendar for this upcoming IIC colloquium:
Nov. 18, 4:00 pm: Joe Futrelle, National Center for Supercomputing
Applications
(Note: This talk will be given in Maxwell Dworkin G135.)
For more information about IIC colloquia and other events :
http://iic.harvard.edu/events/upcoming_____________________________________…
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