Batch 2: Definition of novel Weather & Climate Dwarfs

TL;DR

This paper defines a second set of key computational components, called dwarfs, for weather and climate prediction models, aiming to improve performance and portability on exascale computing systems.

Contribution

It introduces new weather and climate prediction dwarfs, expanding the set of key computational patterns for optimized high-performance modeling.

Findings

Defined and documented four new dwarfs: multigrid elliptic solver, advection schemes, radiation scheme.

Made the software for these dwarfs available on the exchange platform.

Extended the range of computational characteristics in the dwarf set.

Abstract

This document is one of the deliverable reports created for the ESCAPE project. ESCAPE stands for Energy-efficient Scalable Algorithms for Weather Prediction at Exascale. The project develops world-class, extreme-scale computing capabilities for European operational numerical weather prediction and future climate models. This is done by identifying weather & climate dwarfs which are key patterns in terms of computation and communication (in the spirit of the Berkeley dwarfs). These dwarfs are then optimised for different hardware architectures (single and multi-node) and alternative algorithms are explored. Performance portability is addressed through the use of domain specific languages. This deliverable contains the description of the characteristics of a second set of so-called numerical weather & climate prediction dwarfs that form key functional components of prediction models in terms of the science that they encapsulate and in terms of computational cost they impose on the forecast production. The ESCAPE work flow between work packages centres on these dwarfs and hence their selection, their performance assessment, code adaptation and optimisation is crucial for the success of the project. These new dwarfs have been chosen with the purpose of extending the range of computational characteristic represented by the dwarfs previously selected in batch 1 (see Deliverable D1.1). The dwarfs have been made, their documentation has been compiled and the software has been made available on the software exchange platform. The dwarfs in this deliverable include a multigrid elliptic solver, a novel advection scheme for unstructured meshes, an advection scheme for structured meshes and a radiation scheme. This deliverable includes their scientific description and the guidance for installation, execution and testing.