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At least 325 records · Page 18

Linear and Nonlinear Solvers for Simulating Multiphase Flow within Large-Scale Engineered Subsurface Systems

Simulation of multiphase flow in the subsurface is well-known to be computationally challenging. While there have been many studies that have explored approaches to overcoming these challenges, they often utilize relatively simple case studies. In this paper, we focus on the unique numerical challenges posed by modeling large-scale engineered subsurface systems, characterized by discrete features embedded in a heterogeneous natural subsurface setting. The man-made features such as shafts, tunnels, and barriers often cause multiple challenges in modeling the domain for multiphase porous media flow. This flow scenario can have a wide range of applications such as nuclear waste repositories, enhanced recovery of a petroleum reservoir, geothermal engineering, and carbon sequestration. An example of these severe numerical challenges is the case of performance assessment (PA) for Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the only operating deep geological repository in the US, which simulates extreme material properties of bedded salt rock formation and extreme contrast due to open excavation next to the formation. The models have extremes not only of permeability and porosity but also of the constitutive models needed for multiphase flow; additionally, they have process models like salt creep closure reducing porosity over time, fracturing in clay and anhydrite interbeds of the bedded salt, gas generation from the waste materials, and unintentional human borehole intrusions in some scenarios. Numerical simulations require the solution of coupled systems of nonlinear PDEs; in our work, we use the open-source simulator PFLOTRAN which is based on Finite Volume discretization. The solution of the nonlinear equations requires use of the Newton-Raphson iteration at each time step, which entails the solution of the linearized Jacobian system at each iteration. The effects of all the processes (i.e., large number of unknowns, highly nonlinear constitutive relations, large contrasts in material properties in short distances) lead to an ill-conditioned Jacobian matrix that severely challenges traditional linear solver, i.e., stabilized biconjugate gradient with block Jacobi incomplete LU preconditioner (BCGS-ILU) leading to non-convergence for traditional Newton-Raphson nonlinear solver causing unacceptably long computation time for each model. This paper presents linear solvers such as constrained pressure residual (CPR) two-stage preconditioner with alternate-block-factorization (ABF) and quasi- implicit pressure and explicit saturation (QIMPES) decouplers and flexible generalized residual solver (FGMRES). The new general-purpose nonlinear solver, Newton trust-region dogleg Cauchy (NTRDC), is also introduced to resolve extreme nonlinearities in the models. We demonstrate the effectiveness of each method relative to the default BCGS-Newton solver. The two best cases had nearly 50 times speed-up and achieved completion of a simulation in 14 hours that never completed due to non-convergence with the default solver. We also investigate the strong scalability of each method and discuss some of the deficiencies found for Block Jacobi preconditioner using parallel domain decomposition, and node packing effects of modern processor architecture.

Preconditioner, Nonlinear, Porous media, Multiphas↗

A Novel Modeling Framework for Computationally Efficient and Accurate Real-Time Ensemble Flood Forecasting With Uncertainty Quantification

A novel modeling framework that simultaneously improves accuracy, predictability, and computational efficiency is presented. It embraces the benefits of three modeling techniques integrated together for the first time: surrogate modeling, parameter inference, and data assimilation. The use of polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) surrogates significantly decreases computational time. Parameter inference allows for model faster convergence, reduced uncertainty, and superior accuracy of simulated results. Ensemble Kalman filters assimilate errors that occur during forecasting. To examine the applicability and effectiveness of the integrated framework, we developed 18 approaches according to how surrogate models are constructed, what type of parameter distributions are used as model inputs, and whether model parameters are updated during the data assimilation procedure. We conclude that (1) PCE must be built over various forcing and flow conditions, and in contrast to previous studies, it does not need to be rebuilt at each time step; (2) model parameter specification that relies on constrained, posterior information of parameters (so-called Selected specification) can significantly improve forecasting performance and reduce uncertainty bounds compared to Random specification using prior information of parameters; and (3) no substantial differences in results exist between single and dual ensemble Kalman filters, but the latter better simulates flood peaks. The use of PCE effectively compensates for the computational load added by the parameter inference and data assimilation (up to ~80 times faster). Therefore, the presented approach contributes to a shift in modeling paradigm arguing that complex, high-fidelity hydrologic and hydraulic models should be increasingly adopted for real-time and ensemble flood forecasting.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Building thermal dynamics modeling with deep transfer learning using a large residential smart thermostat dataset

Understanding thermal dynamics and obtaining the computational model of residential buildings enable its scaled application in energy retrofits, control optimization and decarbonization. In this paper, we present a deep learning approach to model building thermal dynamics with smart thermostat data collected from residential buildings, with the goal to investigate model generalizability. In the first stage, we developed and compared different Deep Learning architectures including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models and CNN-LSTM to predict indoor air temperature in a multi-step time horizon. In the second stage, we implemented a Transfer Learning (TL) process, which aims to improve the prediction performance on a new set of buildings (targets), exploiting the knowledge of related or similar buildings (sources). Different TL strategies and source model identification methods were investigated. The study showed that the CNN-LSTM performed the best among the architectures compared, with an average Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.26 °C for one-hour-ahead (twelve 5-min future steps) predictions. Furthermore, the results showed that freezing the LSTM layer and fine-tuning the other layers of the CNN-LSTM achieved the best performance among four TL strategies, which further improved the performance with respect to a machine learning approach by 10%, and proving the effectiveness and generalizability of the proposed approach. A comparison of three different source model identification methods showed that randomly selecting source models constrained by similar building characteristics can provide good TL performance while retaining simplicity comparing with other quantitative source identification methods.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

A finite-volume scheme for modeling compressible magnetohydrodynamic flows at low Mach numbers in stellar interiors

Fully compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations are a fundamental tool for investigating the role of dynamo amplification in the generation of magnetic fields in deep convective layers of stars. The flows that arise in such environments are characterized by low (sonic) Mach numbers ($\mathscr{M}$ son ≲ 10 –2 ). In these regimes, conventional MHD codes typically show excessive dissipation and tend to be inefficient as the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) constraint on the time step becomes too strict. In this work we present a new method for efficiently simulating MHD flows at low Mach numbers in a space-dependent gravitational potential while still retaining all effects of compressibility. The proposed scheme is implemented in the finite-volume SEVEN-LEAGUE HYDRO (SLH) code, and it makes use of a low-Mach version of the five-wave Harten–Lax–van Leer discontinuities (HLLD) solver to reduce numerical dissipation, an implicit–explicit time discretization technique based on Strang splitting to overcome the overly strict CFL constraint, and a well-balancing method that dramatically reduces the magnitude of spatial discretization errors in strongly stratified setups. The solenoidal constraint on the magnetic field is enforced by using a constrained transport method on a staggered grid. We carry out five verification tests, including the simulation of a small-scale dynamo in a star-like environment at $\mathscr{M}$ son ~ 10 –3 . We demonstrate that the proposed scheme can be used to accurately simulate compressible MHD flows in regimes of low Mach numbers and strongly stratified setups even with moderately coarse grids.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Stochastic Price Generation for Evaluating Wholesale Electricity Market Bidding Strategies

This work presents a novel method for generating electricity price scenarios from statistical properties of past electricity prices using a hybrid statistical and reduced-form stochastic model. Previous work in applying stochastic differential equations (SDE) to model electricity prices has focused on daily average prices. To extend stochastic price generation methods to hourly or sub-hourly pricing, we address several weaknesses in the state-of-the-art: (1) we replace the mean-reversion component of the SDE with an ARIMA process that is better able to characterize the daily and weekly trends; (2) we extend the price-spike, or jump process to account for conditional probabilities of price spikes occurring in consecutive time steps by replacing the traditional Poisson process for modeling jumps with a generalized point process model inspired by brain neuron models; and (3) we replace the traditional method of estimating spike intensity with empirical variance with a Markov process based on observed price spike intensity transitions. The method is demonstrated with electricity prices from the US ERCOT market and a use-case example is provided for bidding an energy storage unit into the day-ahead and real-time energy markets of ERCOT using stochastic optimization methods. Results show that the the synthetic price model out performs a (naive) persistence forecast model by resulting in 24% to 47% more in profits over 168 simulated days.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

On numerical energy conservation for an implicit particle-in-cell method coupled with a binary Monte-Carlo algorithm for Coulomb collisions

We report conventional particle-in-cell (PIC) methods suffer from enhanced numerical heating (explicit PIC) or cooling (semi-implicit PIC) when coupled with a binary Monte-Carlo algorithm for Coulomb collisions. In this work, a fully-implicit θ-PIC scheme (with adjustable time-biasing parameter 1/2 ≤ θ ≤) is considered. The discrete change in energy of a closed system after a time step for this scheme scales with (1/2 - θ)C θ , where C θ is a positive definite quantity that depends on the frequency spectrum of the energy in the fields. Collisions lead to additional energy in the field fluctuations associated with high-frequency light waves produced by a numerical Bremsstrahlung process, which can result in a large increase in the numerical cooling rate for θ > 1/2. However, for θ = 1/2, energy is exactly conserved. The energy in the field fluctuations on long time scales agrees with that calculated using the equipartition theorem for a classical system in thermodynamic equilibrium.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

A Survey of Multimaterial Treatments for Thermal Radiative Transfer

Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian methods are a popular choice for hydrodynamic modeling in radiation (rad-hydro) simulations. Because these methods involve a relaxation step that moves the mesh relative to material boundaries, multimaterial spatial zones are generally present. Accurate treatments of these zones are needed to resolve various physical phenomena of interest for inertial confinement fusion applications. However, these codes are often paired with single-material, deterministic thermal radiative transfer (TRT) codes that are oblivious to the material compositions of each zone. These single-material TRT codes can only accept homogenized material properties (opacities, specific heats, etc.) from the hydrodynamic code and output homogenized solutions. After each TRT time step, the multimaterial hydrodynamic code must dehomogenize the quantities computed by the TRT package in order to update subzonal material temperatures. The process by which hydrodynamic codes perform this dehomogenization has not been well documented in previous literature, and the methods can vary significantly from code to code. The purpose of this paper is to document, study, and compare existing techniques used for rad-hydro simulations as well as present a new method with potentially promising results. We summarize several methods and give comparisons on infinite-medium problems as well a finite-medium problem for two of the methods.

42 ENGINEERING↗

California wildfire spread derived using VIIRS satellite observations and an object-based tracking system

Changing wildfire regimes in the western US and other fire-prone regions pose considerable risks to human health and ecosystem function. However, our understanding of wildfire behavior is still limited by a lack of data products that systematically quantify fire spread, behavior and impacts. Here we develop a novel object-based system for tracking the progression of individual fires using 375 m Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite active fire detections. At each half-daily time step, fire pixels are clustered according to their spatial proximity, and are either appended to an existing active fire object or are assigned to a new object. This automatic system allows us to update the attributes of each fire event, delineate the fire perimeter, and identify the active fire front shortly after satellite data acquisition. Using this system, we mapped the history of California fires during 2012–2020. Our approach and data stream may be useful for calibration and evaluation of fire spread models, estimation of near-real-time wildfire emissions, and as means for prescribing initial conditions in fire forecast models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Efficient data acquisition and training of collisional-radiative model artificial neural network surrogates through adaptive parameter space sampling

Abstract Effective plasma transport modeling of magnetically confined fusion devices relies on having an accurate understanding of the ion composition and radiative power losses of the plasma. Generally, these quantities can be obtained from solutions of a collisional-radiative (CR) model at each time step within a plasma transport simulation. However, even compact, approximate CR models can be computationally onerous to evaluate, and in-situ evaluation of these models within a larger plasma transport code can lead to a rigid bottleneck. As a way to bypass this bottleneck, we propose deploying artificial neural network (ANN) surrogates to allow rapid evaluation of the necessary plasma quantities. However, one issue with training an accurate ANN surrogate is the reliance on a sufficiently large and representative training and validation data set, which can be time-consuming to generate. In this work we explore a data-driven active learning and training routine to allow autonomous adaptive sampling of the problem parameter space to ensure a sufficiently large and meaningful set of training data is assembled for the network training. As a result, we can demonstrate approximately order-of-magnitude savings in required training data samples to produce an accurate surrogate.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Thermalization of nuclear matter in heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies

We analyze the time evolution of the kinetic properties of nuclear matter produced in heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies. The collision system is simulated using Constrained Molecular Dynamics (CoMD) transport calculations whose output is the isospin, position, and momentum of the nucleons. Focusing on central 35 A·MeV 40 Ca+ 40 Ca collisions we utilize this information to extract localized momentum distributions in volume elements of 8 fm 3 and time steps of 5 fm/$c$. We then parameterize the single-particle momentum distributions with thermally motivated fit functions in the local rest frame of each cell. While the transverse-momentum distributions are well reproduced by thermal ones, the longitudinal ones carry a marked imprint of the initial nuclear motion which we capture by introducing a centroid motion into our fit functions. In particular, we find that Fermi distributions yield significantly better fits than Boltzmann ones, a consequence of the Pauli blocking implemented in CoMD. From the fits we extract the time dependence of the thermodynamic and collective properties of the excited nuclear medium. We find that the transverse temperature gradually rises to about 6 MeV, which is accompanied by a dissipation of the initial centroid motion of the incoming nuclei which vanishes at about 100 fm/c after initial impact. In conclusion, we are therefore able to track the transition of beam energy into random kinetic energy for nucleons, suggesting a three-dimensional equilibration of energy in the late stages of the collision.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Enabling topography-resolving structural dynamic contact simulation

Damping of structures and systems is often dominated by frictional dissipation in connections, the prediction of which remains a longstanding scientific challenge. Previous studies have shown that the actual topography of contact interfaces may have a strong effect, especially in the partial slip/liftoff regime. We recently proposed a multi-scale method, which couples finite element and boundary element modeling. The primary benefit of this approach is that it permits to analyze the effect of the actual contact topography on the dynamics of jointed structures. While this multi-scale modeling method was initially developed for quasi-static analysis, we demonstrate herein how it can be used for time step integration and Harmonic Balance analysis. We cross-verify those fully dynamic analysis methods against each other and quasi-static results, for the S4 Beam benchmark. We compare the multi-scale method against state-of-the-art full-FE analysis, in terms of numerical damping and computational performance. Some discrepancy is found to be of physical origin. Depending on the load history, it is shown that the system settles to a slightly different equilibrium. Finally, transient multi-scale simulations enable the prediction of this interesting phenomenon, for the first time, for a structure with bolted joints.

Frictional-unilateral contact↗

The Myth of Fungible FTE: A Quantitative Assessment of Matrixed Resource Allocation

Matrix organizations allow scientific facilities to share specialized personnel across projects, operations, maintenance, and strategic initiatives. Nominal staffing allocations, however, may not capture the schedule consequences of fragmented individual commitments, limited access to specialist groups, and intermittent availability of key decision makers. We developed a stochas- tic, daily-time-step simulation of a hypothetical medium-sized accelerator-facility project com- prising sequential phases and parallel tasks. Each task requires role-specific work measured in FTE-days. Ordinary personnel may be unavailable because they contribute concurrently to other institutional activities, while designated key roles have independently specified daily un- availability probabilities. An organization-wide priority factor scales the number of people from each functional group who can effectively contribute to the project. It is interpreted as a composite proxy for project access and workforce fragmentation across competing commit- ments. We examined project completion time as a function of this factor and Project Lead unavailability using 100 Monte Carlo runs per condition. Increasing priority factor from 0.1 to 1.0 reduced median completion time from 1708.5 days (interquartile range 1681.5–1735.25) to 390 days (interquartile range 379–399). At priority factor = 0.1, increasing Project Lead unavailability from 0.5 to 0.9 increased median completion time from 1713.5 days (interquartile range 1691–1733.25) to 4,417 days (interquartile range 4271.75–4550.5). The model quantifies the commonly expected sensitivity of project schedules to fragmented resource commitments and limited coordination availability. Within this model, the results also indicate a possible threshold regime in which small increases in workforce availability yield only modest sched- ule improvements until sufficient capacity becomes accessible, after which project performance improves sharply. With further validation and calibration, this quantitative framework could support resource-allocation decisions during initial project planning and subsequent schedule rebaselining.

Bai, Mei [SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SL↗

In Situ Machine Learning for Intelligent Data Capture on Exascale Platforms. Final Report

In many dynamic systems, interesting events occur locally in time and space. Examples of such systems include ignition events in combustion simulations, material fractures in mechanics simulations, and extreme weather events in climate simulations. Due to memory constraints and data I/O costs, current simulation workflows save data at regularly spaced time-steps, at a fixed rate determined before the start of the simulation. Often this mode of operation results in missed events of interest, necessitating a simulation restart from before an event occurred with more frequent data saves. This data saving workflow is grossly inefficient and is already a bottleneck in the computing process. We propose to develop machine learning algorithms that can detect when interesting dynamical events are occurring, triggering data saves. These machine learning algorithms will perform in situ anomaly detection to flag regions with different dynamical properties than those previously recorded. The adaptive data saves would be local in time and space to match the event of interest, thereby enabling a much more efficient workflow that will reduce data I/O costs and data storage memory requirements. The algorithms will be tested on two applications: auto-ignition simulations and climate simulations. A critical component of this project will be developing machine learning algorithms that can be deployed efficiently in situ on HPC platforms with out-of-the-box functionality. The development of in situ machine learning methods to detect anomalous events would enable a more efficient and effective workflow, in which all the relevant data are saved in a single simulation run, without re-starts or scientist intervention.

42 ENGINEERING↗

A deep learning-based workflow for fast prediction of 3D state variables in geological carbon storage: A dimension reduction approach

Deep learning (DL) models are extensively used as surrogate models for high-fidelity simulations of multiphase fluid flow in porous media at large scales, enabling fast forecasts of the spatial–temporal evolution of three-dimensional (3D) state variables in geological carbon storage (GCS). However, training these models in high-dimensional space remains computationally demanding and prone to overfitting because of limited training data. This paper presents a novel workflow to address these challenges by integrating dimension reduction (DR) methods. Here, the proposed workflow employed pre-trained DR models to extract the latent variables of geological models and state variables and utilized the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for constructing mapping functions between the input and output variables in latent spaces. Subsequently, the pre-trained reconstruction models converted the MLP-predicted latent state variables to their original high-dimensional form. Furthermore, we proposed a novel strategy for the DR and reconstruction of 3D saturation fields to account for the unique data characteristics of sparsity, nonuniformity, and discontinuity. The proposed strategy applied PCA and inverse PCA for 2D average saturation fields and developed a DL-based 3D reconstruction model, leveraging three 2D average saturation fields as input to produce a 3D saturation field as output. The pre-training of DR and reconstruction models and training of MLP models were conducted on 84 Gulf of Mexico (GoM) simulations and evaluated on 12 testing simulations. Each simulation contained 720 monthly time steps, with the first 360 months as the injection period and the rest as the post-injection period. The proposed workflow, incorporating DR and DL models, accurately predicts the normalized 3D pressure fields, achieving mean square error (MSE) of 2.92 × 10 -7 compared to the ground truth obtained from a full-physics simulator. Furthermore, the proposed strategy outperformed PCA and convolutional autoencoder (CAE) models on 3D saturation fields, resulting in minor workflow prediction errors with an MSE of 2.93 × 10 -5 . The results suggest the proposed workflow provides sufficient predictive fidelity across temporal and spatial scales, and enables a speedup of 160 times compared to the full-physics simulator, facilitating improved decision-making and risk assessment for large-scale GCS management in real-time scenarios.

3D reconstruction model↗

An Optimization-Based Coupling of Reduced Order Models with an Efficient Reduced Adjoint Basis Generation Approach

Optimization-based coupling (OBC) is an attractive alternative to traditional Lagrange multiplier approaches in multiple modeling and simulation contexts. However, application of OBC to time-dependent problems has been hindered by the computational cost of finding the stationary points of the associated Lagrangian, which requires primal and adjoint solves. This issue can be mitigated by using OBC in conjunction with computationally efficient reduced order models (ROMs). To demonstrate the potential of this combination, in this paper, we develop an optimization-based ROM-ROM coupling for a transient advection-diffusion transmission problem. We pursue the “optimize-then-reduce” path toward solving the minimization problem at each time step and solve reduced space adjoint system of equations, where the main challenge in this formulation is the generation of adjoint snapshots and reduced bases for the adjoint systems required by the optimizer. One of the main contributions of the paper is a new technique for an efficient adjoint snapshot collection for gradient-based optimizers in the context of optimization-based ROM-ROM couplings. In conclusion, we present numerical studies demonstrating the accuracy of the approach along with comparison between various approaches for selecting a reduced order basis for the adjoint systems, including decay of snapshot energy, average iteration counts, and timings.

coupled problems↗

Quandary

Quandary numerically simulates and optimizes the time-evolution of open quantum systems. The underlying dynamics are modelled by Lindblad's master equation, a linear ordinary differential equation (ODE) describing quantum systems interacting with the environment. Quandary solves this ODE numerically by applying a time-stepping integration scheme, and utilizes a gradient-based optimization approach to determine optimal control pulses that drive the quantum system to a desired target state. Two optimization objectives are considered: (a) Unitary gate optimization that finds controls to realize a unitary gate transformation, and (b) optimal reset that aims to drive the quantum system to the ground states. Gradient-based optimization schemes utilizing Petsc's Tao optimization package are applied to generate control pulses that minimize the respective measure. To evaluate the gradient of the objective function, the discrete adjoint method is used while leveraging techniques from Algorithmic Differentiation to produce exact and consistent gradients. To mitigate excessive execution run times, the software can be build together with the XBraid software library which provides a parallelization strategy to distribute the time-evolution of the underlying dynamics onto multiple processor.

Petersson, NilsA.↗

Spatially Local Surrogate Modeling of Subgrid-Scale Effects in Idealized Atmospheric Flows: A Deep Learned Approach Using High-Resolution Simulation Data

Abstract We introduce a machine learned surrogate model from high-resolution simulation data to capture the subgrid-scale effects in dry, stratified atmospheric flows. We use deep neural networks (NNs) to model the spatially local state differences between a coarse-resolution simulation and a high-resolution simulation. The setup enables the capture of both dissipative and antidissipative effects in the state differences. The NN model is able to accurately capture the state differences in offline tests outside the training regime. In online tests intended for production use, the NN-coupled coarse simulation has higher accuracy over a significant period of time compared to the coarse-resolution simulation without any correction. We provide evidence of the capability of the NN model to accurately capture high-gradient regions in the flow field. With the accumulation of the errors, the NN-coupled simulation becomes computationally unstable after approximately 90 coarse simulation time steps. Insights gained from these surrogate models further pave the way for formulating stable, complex, physics-based spatially local NN models which are driven by traditional subgrid-scale turbulence closure models. Significance Statement Flows in the atmosphere are highly chaotic and turbulent, comprising flow structures of broad scales. For effective computational modeling of atmospheric flows, the effects of the small- and large-scale structures need to be captured by the simulations. Capturing the small-scale structures requires fine-resolution simulations. Even with the current state-of-the-art supercomputers, it can be prohibitively expensive to simulate these flows when computed for the entire earth over climate time scales. Thus, it is necessary to focus on the larger-scale structures using a coarse-resolution simulation while capturing the effects of the smaller-scale structures using some parameterization (approximation) scheme and incorporating it into the coarse-resolution simulation. We use machine learning to model the effects of the small-scale structures (subgrid-scale effects) in atmospheric flows. Data from a fine-resolution simulation is used to compute the missing subgrid-scale effects in coarse-resolution simulations. We then use machine learning models to approximate these differences between the coarse- and fine-resolution simulations. We see improved accuracy for the coarse-resolution simulations when corrected using these machine learned models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Implementing Arbitrary/Common Concurrent Writes of CRCW PRAM

The Parallel Random Access Machines (PRAM) abstraction is the simplest and most elegant algorithmic model for the design and analysis of parallel algorithms. It consists of different models categorized based on the underlying memory access mode used, the most powerful of which is the Concurrent Read Concurrent Write (CRCW) model. A PRAM algorithm describes a series of rounds, each of which consists of a collection of operations that can be executed concurrently within the same time step. However, the lack of support for concurrent memory accesses and the prevalence of asynchronous programming models led to the belief that implementing CRCW PRAM algorithms is unattainable and prompted many to avoid this model except for theoretical studies of optimal performance.In this work, we study the arbitrary and common concurrent writes in the CRCW PRAM model and explore implementation challenges on general-purpose systems. Moreover, we examine current practices for implementing common/arbitrary concurrent writes and propose a new efficient lightweight and thread-safe method to implement concurrent writes through leveraging atomic instructions. To demonstrate the efficacy of our method, we developed OpenMP kernels for classical CRCW PRAM algorithms and provide experimental results and comparisons based on run time performance measured over the x86 multicore architecture. Our results show a performance speedup compared to current practices up to 4.5x across all our benchmarks.

Ghanim, Fady↗