Accelerating large-scale phase-field simulations with GPU

• Main Authors: Xiaoming Shi, Houbing Huang, Guoping Cao, Xingqiao Ma
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIP Publishing LLC 2017-10-01
• Series: AIP Advances
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5003709

A new package for accelerating large-scale phase-field simulations was developed by using GPU based on the semi-implicit Fourier method. The package can solve a variety of equilibrium equations with different inhomogeneity including long-range elastic, magnetostatic, and electrostatic interactions. Through using specific algorithm in Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), Fourier spectral iterative perturbation method was integrated in GPU package. The Allen-Cahn equation, Cahn-Hilliard equation, and phase-field model with long-range interaction were solved based on the algorithm running on GPU respectively to test the performance of the package. From the comparison of the calculation results between the solver executed in single CPU and the one on GPU, it was found that the speed on GPU is enormously elevated to 50 times faster. The present study therefore contributes to the acceleration of large-scale phase-field simulations and provides guidance for experiments to design large-scale functional devices.