Marine Science Faculty Publications
Ocean Modelling on Supercomputers
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
1986
Keywords
Indian Ocean, Wind Stress, Ocean Modelling, Vector Length, Vector Computation
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0627-8_18
Was this content written or created while at USF?
No
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Ocean Modelling on Supercomputers, in M. E. Luther & J. J. O'Brien (Eds.), Advanced Physical Oceanographic Numerical Modelling, Springer, p. 265-297
Scholar Commons Citation
Luther, Mark E., "Ocean Modelling on Supercomputers" (1986). Marine Science Faculty Publications. 502.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/msc_facpub/502
COinS
Comments
We describe the use of supercomputers in general and the necessary considerations for their efficient use in ocean modelling. A brief history of supercomputer development is given, and the relative merits of the Cray X-MP and Cyber 205 (the two leading supercomputers at present) machines are compared. Automatic vectorization is described for both machines. Explicit vectorization via the Cyber 205 Fortran vector extensions is discussed.
We next describe a specific example of a model of the Indian Ocean. The model was originally run on a Cyber 170/760 scalar computer in standard Fortran and has been rewritten in the explicit Cyber 205 Vector Fortran. Sections of model code before and after vectorization are presented to illustrate the usage of the special features of the Cyber 205. The vectorized version of the model runs approximately 32 times faster than the scalar version. Some key results of the model simulation are also described.