Computational performance of ultra-high-resolution capability in the Community Earth System Model

• Published in: The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications
• Other Authors: Dennis, John (author), Vertenstein, Mariana (author), Worley, Patrick (author), Mirin, Arthur (author), Craig, Anthony (author), Jacob, Robert (author), Mickelson, Sheri (author)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Sage Publications, Inc. 2012
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/collections/OSGC-000-000-003-872; https://doi.org/10.1177/1094342012436965

With the fourth release of the Community Climate System Model, the ability to perform ultra-high resolution climate simulations is now possible, enabling eddy-resolving ocean and sea ice models to be coupled to a finite-volume atmosphere model for a range of atmospheric resolutions. This capability was made possible by enabling the model to use large scale parallelism, which required a significant refactoring of the software infrastructure. We describe the scalability of two ultra-high-resolution coupled configurations on leadership class computing platforms. We demonstrate the ability to utilize over 30,000 processor cores on a Cray XT5 system and over 60,000 cores on an IBM Blue Gene/P system to obtain climatologically relevant simulation rates for these configurations. ATM0856145 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): DE-FG02-06ER06-04 National Science Foundation (NSF): CCF-0937939 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): DE-FC02-07ER64340 National Science Foundation (NSF): OCI-0749206 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): DE-AC02-06CH11357 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): DE-FC02-97ER62402 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): DE-PS02-07ER07-06