Brief Announcement: Towards a Communication Optimal Fast Multipole Method and its Implications at Exascale

摘要

This paper presents the first in-depth models for compute and memory costs of the kernel-independent Fast Multipole Method (KIFMM). The Fast Multiple Method (FMM) has asymptotically linear time complexity with a guaranteed approximation accuracy, making it an attractive candidate for a wide variety of particle system simulations on future exascale systems. This paper reports on three key advances. First, we present lower bounds on cache complexity for key phases of the FMM and use these bounds to derive analytical performance models. Secondly, using these models, we present results for choosing the optimal algorithmic tuning parameter. Lastly, we use these performance models to make predictions about FMM's scalability on possible exascale system configurations, based on current technology trends. Looking forward to exascale, we suggest that the FMM, though highly compute-bound on today's systems, could in fact become memory-bound by 2020.