Re: Workstation Computers for FLUKA

From: Paul Colin Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster_at_ACM.org>
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 12:23:46 +0000 (UTC)

Nicholas Bolibruch<nboli_at_Acanac.net> sent on November 25th, 2010:

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|"[..] =
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|I personally would love to see a version of Fluka take advantage of =
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|modern graphics processors that have a large number of cores, and are =
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|now showing good performance for double precision operations. There are=
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|some utilities to convert Fortran 95 code to CUDA, obviously with a lot =
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|of manual work to specify what resources to allocate for particular code=
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|segments, unfortunately I have yet to find anything that can do this for=
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|Fortran 77. Maybe converting from F77 to C then to CUDA, but it would =
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|create some highly convoluted code that still needs to be maintained." =
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Hi,

I have a background in computer science.

FORTRAN 77 is a bad language, as is Fortran 95. However, Fortran 95
has some support for strong typing, therefore making it easier for
compilers to generate faster executables.

(C also has some support for strong typing, but C's aliasing
complications hinder compilers from optimizing.)

I do not have a license for the source code, but perhaps it would be
easier to develop a version which is compatible with Fortran 95, than
to replace the FORTRAN77 code with C code. Perhaps a CUDA version
could follow the version in Fortran 95.

However, there are other possibilities. Perhaps Fluka is compatible
with CUDA Fortran:
WWW.PGroup.com/resources/cudafortran.htm
which is supposedly based on Fortran 2003. One should not always
believe claims made by the Portland Group, however.

Aside from other possibilities for targeting CUDA (from NVIDIA), there
are also other targets...
http://developer.AMD.com/zones/OpenCLZone/Pages/default.aspx
and
http://WWW.AMD.com/uk/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/v8800/=
Pages/v8800-resources.aspx

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|"However, if my memory serves me correctly, doing this would be a =
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|violation of the Fluka source code license agreement, as it would be =
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|compiling Fluka for an unsupported architecture. =
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|Hope this helps. =
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|Cheers, =
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|Nicholas Bolibruch =
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|Controls& Instrumentation Development =
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|Canadian Light Source Inc." =
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I do not have such a license and I do not know its terms, but perhaps
a demonstration that it would be beneficial to support such a platform
would help to make it become a supported platform.

Regards,
Paul Colin Gloster,
Departamento de F=C3=ADsica,
Universidade de Coimbra,
Rua Larga,
3004-516 Coimbra,
Portugal.
Received on Fri Nov 26 2010 - 16:57:10 CET

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