Application of High Performance ParalleX (HPX) for High Performance Computing of Hurricane Storm Surge

HPX (High Performance ParalleX) is a general purpose C++ runtime system for parallel and distributed applications of any scale. It strives to provide a unified programming model which transparently utilizes the available resources to achieve unprecedented levels of scalability.  This library strictly adheres to the C++11 Standard and leverages the Boost C++ Libraries which makes HPX easy to use, highly optimized, and very portable.  HPX is developed for conventional architectures including Linux-based systems, Windows, Mac, and the BlueGene/Q, as well as accelerators such as the Xeon Phi. 

In this talk, we discuss the application of HPX within the Discontinuous Galerkin Shallow Water Model (DGSWEM), a high-order finite volume/element code which utilizes unstructured finite element meshes for complex coastal applications coupled with robust discontinuous Galerkin discretizations.  DGSWEM has been in development for a number of years and includes complex wetting/drying, incorporates levees and seawalls, and includes hurricane wind forcing using a variety of wind models.  The code was originally parallelized using MPI.  It has been applied to the study of hurricanes along the Texas coast, including Hurricane Ike.  We report on the recent development of DGSWEM/HPX, which utilizes the new HPX runtime system for parallelization.  We will discuss the changes to the model needed to implement HPX and present scaling studies on large-scale supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin.