Applications of Heterogeneous Computing in Computational and Simulation Science

As the size and complexity of scientific problems and datasets grow, scientists from a broad range of discipline areas are relying more and more on computational methods and simulations to help solve their problems. This paper presents a summary of heterogeneous algorithms and applications that have been developed by a large research organization (CSIRO) for solving practical and challenging science problems faster than is possible with conventional multi-core CPUs alone. The problem domains discussed include biological image analysis, computed tomography reconstruction, marine biogeochemical models, fluid dynamics, and bioinformatics. The algorithms utilize GPUs and multi-core CPUs on a scale ranging from single workstation installations through to large GPU clusters. Results demonstrate that large GPU clusters can be used to accelerate a variety of practical science applications, and justify the significant financial investment and interest being placed into such systems.