Implementation aspects of the 3D wave propagation in semi-infinite domains using the finite difference method on a GPU based cluster

Abstract

The scattering of acoustic waves has been a matter of practical interest for the petroleum industry, mainly in the determination of new oil deposits. A family of computational models that represent this phenomenon is based on Finite Difference Methods (FDM). The simulation of these phenomena demands a high computational processing power and large amounts of memory. Furthermore, solving this problem in a high performance computing (HPC) environment requires the use of tools such as MPI (Message Passing Interface) and GPUs in order to soften the effort necessary on implementation. In this work a GPU based cluster environment is employed for the development of an efficient scalable solver for a 3D wave propagation problem using the FDM. The details related to the implementation of the FDM applied to wave propagation in GPUs are presented. A performance analysis for several simulations is also discussed. The solution discussed herein is suitable not only for a single GPU system, but for clusters of GPUs as well. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.