Finite element numerical integration on Xeon Phi coprocessor

Abstract

In the present article we describe the implementation of the finite element numerical integration algorithm for the Xeon Phi coprocessor. The coprocessor is an extension of the idea of the many-core specialized unit for calculations and, by assumption, its performance has to be competitive with the current families of GPUs. Its main advantage is the built-in set of 512-bit vector registers and the ease of transferring existing codes from normal x86 architectures. However, the differences between standard x86 architectures and Xeon Phi do not guarantee performance portability. We choose an alternative approach and, instead of porting standard multithreaded code, we adapt to Xeon Phi previously developed OpenCL algorithms for finite element numerical integration. The algorithm is tested for standard FEM approximations of selected problems. The obtained timing results allow to compare the performance of the OpenCL kernels executed on the Xeon Phi and the contemporary GPUs.