Porting the 3D Gyrokinetic Particle-in-cell Code GTS to the CRAY/NEC SX-6 Vector Architecture: Perspectives and Challenges

摘要

The impressive performance achieved in 2002 by the Japanese Earth Simulator computer (26.58 Tflops, 64.9% of peak) has revived the interest in vector processors. Having been the flagship of high performance computing for more than two decades, vector computers were gradually replaced, at least in the US, by much cheaper multi-processor super-scalar machines, such as the IBM SP and the SGI Origin series. Although the theoretical peak performance of the superscalar processors rivals their vector counterparts, most codes cannot take advantage of this and can run only at a few percent of peak performance (