SUMMARYWe implement and evaluate a massively parallel and scalable algorithm based on a multigrid preconditioned Defect Correction method for the simulation of fully nonlinear free surface flows. The simulations are based on a potential model that describes wave propagation over uneven bottoms in three space dimensions and is useful for fast analysis and prediction purposes in coastal and offshore engineering. A dedicated numerical model based on the proposed algorithm is executed in parallel by utilizing affordable modern special purpose graphics processing unit (GPU). The model is based on a low-storage flexible-order accurate finite difference method that is known to be efficient and scalable on a CPU core (single thread). To achieve parallel performance of the relatively complex numerical model, we investigate a new trend in high-performance computing where many-core GPUs are utilized as high-throughput co-processors to the CPU. We describe and demonstrate how this approach makes it possible to do fast desktop computations for large nonlinear wave problems in numerical wave tanks (NWTs) with close to 50/100 million total grid points in double/single precision with 4 GB global device memory available. A new code base has been developed in C++ and compute unified device architecture C and is found to improve the runtime more than an order in magnitude in double precision arithmetic for the same accuracy over an existing CPU (single thread) Fortran 90 code when executed on a single modern GPU. These significant improvements are achieved by carefully implementing the algorithm to minimize data-transfer and take advantage of the massive multi-threading capability of the GPU device.

We present performance results of a mixed-precision strategy developed to improve a recently developed massively parallel GPU-accelerated tool for fast and scalable simulation of unsteady fully nonlinear free surface water waves over uneven depths (Engsig-Karup et.al. 2011). The underlying wave model is based on a potential flow formulation, which requires efficient solution of a Laplace problem at large-scales. We report recent results on a new mixed-precision strategy for efficient iterative high-order accurate and scalable solution of the Laplace problem using a multigrid-preconditioned defect correction method. The improved strategy improves the performance by exploiting architectural features of modern GPUs for mixed precision computations and is tested in a recently developed generic library for fast prototyping of PDE solvers. The new wave tool is applicable to solve and analyze large-scale wave problems in coastal and offshore engineering.