Optimization Strategies for Molecular Dynamics Programs on Cray Computers and Scalar Work Stations.

Abstract

We present results of timing runs and different optimization strategies for a prototype molecular dynamics program that simulates shock waves in a two-dimensional (2-D) model of a reactive energetic solid. The performance of the program may be improved substantially by simple changes to the Fortran or by employing various vendor-supplied compiler optimizations.& The optimum strategy varies among the machines used and will vary depending upon the details of the program. The effect of various compiler options and vendor-supplied subroutine calls is demonstrated. Comparison is made between two scale% workstations (IBM RS/6000 Model 370 and Model 530) and several Cray supercomputers (x-MP/48, Y-Mp8/128, and C-90/16256). We find that for a scientific application program dominated by sequential, scalar statements, a relatively inexpensive high-end work station such as the IBM RS/60006 RISC series will outperform single processor performance of the Cray X-MP/48 and perform competitively with single processor performance of the Y-MP8/128 and C-9O/16256.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA289574

Entities

People

  • Betsy M. Rice
  • Michael J. Unekis

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Compilers
  • Computational Chemistry
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Simulations
  • Computers
  • Dynamics
  • Floating Point Operations
  • Instruction Set Architecture
  • Molecular Dynamics
  • Operating Systems
  • Procedures (Computers)
  • Simulations
  • Two Dimensional
  • Work Stations

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Computer Science.
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.