Abstract
Computational modeling is a powerful tool in the Earth Sciences. In the solid Earth important simulation areas include seismic wave propagation, rupture and fault dynamics in the lithosphere, creep in the mantle, and magneto-hydrodynamic flow linked to magnetic field generation in the core. These problems rank among the most demanding calculations computational physicists can perform today. They exceed the limitations of the largest high-performance computing systems by a factor of ten to one hundred measured both in terms of the demands on capacity and capability of systems. Off-the-shelf high-performance Linux clusters are useful to ease the limitations in capacity computing by exploiting price advantages in mass produced PC hardware. Here we review our experience of building a 128 processor AMD Opteron Gigabit Ethernet Linux cluster. The machine is operated at the scientific department level, targeted directly at large-scale geophysical and tectonic modeling and is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Science and the Free State of Bavaria. We observe an aggregate system performance of 140 GFLOPs out of a theoretical 624 GFLOPs peak.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bunge, H.-P., Richards, M.A., Lithgow-Bertelloni, C., Baumgardner, J.R., Grand, S., Romanowicz, B.: Time scales and heterogeneous structure in geodynamic earth models. Science 280, 91–95 (1998)
Jarvis, G.T., McKenzie, D.P.: Convection in a compressible fluid with infinite prandtl number. Journal of Fluid Mechanics 96, 515–583 (1980)
Glatzmaier, G.A.: Numerical simulations of mantle convection: Time-dependent, three-dimensional, compressible, spherical shell. Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics 43, 223–264 (1988)
Tackley, P.J., Stevenson, D.J., Glatzmaier, G.A., Schubert, G.: Effects of an endothermic phase transition at 670 km depth on a spherical model of convection in Earth’s mantle. Nature 361, 699–704 (1993)
Bunge, H.-P., Richards, M.A., Baumgardner, J.R.: Effect of depth dependent viscosity on the planform of mantle convection. Nature 379, 436–438 (1996)
Zhong, S., Zuber, M.T., Moresi, L., Gurnis, M.: Role of temperature-dependent viscosity and surface plates in spherical shell models of mantle convection. Journal of Geophysical Research 105, 11063–11082 (2000)
Glatzmaier, G.A., Roberts, P.H.: A three-dimensional, self-consistent computer simulation of a geomagnetic field reversal. Nature 377, 203–209 (1995)
Kuang, W.L., Bloxham, J.: An earth-like numerical dynamo model. Nature 389, 371–374 (1997)
Igel, H., Weber, M.: SH-wave propagation in the whole mantle using high-order finite differences. Geophysical Research Letters 22, 731–734 (1995)
Komatitsch, D., Tromp, J.: Introduction to the spectral element method for three-dimensional seismic wave propagation. Geophysical Journal International 139, 806–822 (1999)
Bunge, H.-P., Richards, M.A., Baumgardner, J.R.: Mantle circulation models with sequential data-assimilation: Inferring present-day mantle structure from plate motion histories. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Series A 360, 2545–2567 (2002)
McNamara, A.K., Zhong, S.: Thermochemical structures beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean. Nature 437, 1136 (2005)
Courtier, P., Talagrand, O.: Variational assimilation of meterological observations with the adjoint vorticity equation I: Numerical results. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 113, 1329–1347 (1987)
Wunsch, C.: The Ocean Circulation Inverse Problem. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)
Bunge, H.-P., Hagelberg, C.R., Travis, B.J.: Mantle circulation models with variational data-assimilation: Inferring past mantle flow and structure from plate motion histories and seismic tomography. Geophysical Journal International 152, 280–301 (2003)
Landau, L., Lifschitz, E.: Fluid mechanics. Pergamon Press, Oxford (1987)
Baumgardner, J.R.: Three-Dimensional Treatment of Convective Flow in the Earth’s Mantle. Journal of Statistical Physics 39, 501–511 (1985)
Williamson, D.: Integration of the barotropic vorticity equations on a spherical geodesic grid. Tellus 20, 642–653 (1968)
Baumgardner, J.R., Frederickson, P.O.: Icosahedral discretization of the two-sphere. SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis 22, 1107–1115 (1985)
Benzi, M., Golub, G., Liesen, J.: Numerical solution of saddle point problems. Acta Numerica 14, 1–137 (2005)
Verfürth, R.: A Combined Conjugate Gradient-Multigrid Algorithm for the Numerical Solution of the Stokes Problem. IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis 4, 441–455 (1984)
Yang, W.-S., Baumgardner, J.R.: A matrix-dependent transfer multigrid method for strongly variable viscosity infinite Prandtl number thermal convection. Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics 92, 151–195 (2000)
Trottenberg, U., Oosterlee, C., Schüller, A.: Multigrid. Academic Press, London (2001)
Hülsemann, F., Kowarschik, M., Mohr, M., Rüde, U.: Parallel Geometric Multigrid. In: Bruaset, A.M., Tveito, A. (eds.) Numerical Solution of Partial Differential Equations on Parallel Computers. Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering, vol. 51. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Oeser, J., Bunge, HP., Mohr, M. (2006). Cluster Design in the Earth Sciences Tethys. In: Gerndt, M., Kranzlmüller, D. (eds) High Performance Computing and Communications. HPCC 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4208. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11847366_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11847366_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-39368-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39372-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)