Comparison of Graphcore IPUs and Nvidia GPUsfor cosmology applications

TL;DR

This study compares Graphcore IPUs and Nvidia GPUs for cosmology deep learning tasks, highlighting IPUs' potential to meet increasing computational demands in the field.

Contribution

First investigation into Graphcore IPUs for cosmology deep learning, benchmarking their performance against Nvidia GPUs across multiple use cases.

Findings

IPUs show promising performance for cosmology applications

Potential of IPUs to address growing computational needs

Benchmark results indicate comparable or superior performance of IPUs

Abstract

This paper represents the first investigation of the suitability and performance of Graphcore Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs) for deep learning applications in cosmology. It presents the benchmark between a Nvidia V100 GPU and a Graphcore MK1 (GC2) IPU on three cosmological use cases: a classical deep neural network and a Bayesian neural network (BNN) for galaxy shape estimation, and a generative network for galaxy images production. The results suggest that IPUs could be a potential avenue to address the increasing computation needs in cosmology.