On maximum achievable speeds for field solvers

Purpose – Prompted by the empirical evidence that achievable flow solver speeds for large problems are limited by what appears to be a time of the order of O(0.1) sec/timestep regardless of the number of cores used, the purpose of this paper is to identify why this phenomenon occurs. Design/methodology/approach – A series of timing studies, as well as in-depth analysis of memory and inter-processors transfer requirements were carried out for a typical field solver. The results were analyzed and compared to the expected performance. Findings – The analysis shows that at present flow speeds per core are already limited by the achievable transfer rate to RAM. For smaller domains/larger number of processors, the limiting speed of CFD solvers is given by the MPI communication network. Research limitations/implications – This implies that at present, there is a “limiting useful size” for domains, and that there is a lower limit for the time it takes to update a flowfield. Practical implications – For practical calculations this implies that the time required for running large-scale problems will not decrease markedly once these applications migrate to machines with hundreds of thousands of cores. Originality/value – This is the first time such a finding has been reported in this context.