Comparing the implementation of two-dimensional numerical quadrature on GPU, FPGA and ClearSpeed systems to study electron scattering by atoms

Abstract

The use of accelerators, with compute architectures different and distinct from the CPU, has become a new research frontier in high-performance computing over the past five years. This paper is a case study on how the instruction-level parallelism offered by three accelerator technologies, FPGA, GPU and ClearSpeed, can be exploited in atomic physics. The algorithm studied is the evaluation of two electron integrals, using direct numerical quadrature, a task that arises in the study of intermediate energy electron scattering by hydrogen atoms. The results of our 'productivity' study show that while each accelerator is viable, there are considerable differences in the implementation strategies that must be followed on each. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.