Affiliations: National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA | Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA | Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA | Department of Physics, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Volodymyr Kindratenko, NCSA, UIUC, 1205 W. Clark St., Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Tel.: +1 217 265 0209; Fax: +1 217 244 1987; E-mail: kindr@ncsa.uiuc.edu.
Abstract: The Cell Broadband Engine architecture is a revolutionary processor architecture well suited for many scientific codes. This paper reports on an effort to implement several traditional high-performance scientific computing applications on the Cell Broadband Engine processor, including molecular dynamics, quantum chromodynamics and quantum chemistry codes. The paper discusses data and code restructuring strategies necessary to adapt the applications to the intrinsic properties of the Cell processor and demonstrates performance improvements achieved on the Cell architecture. It concludes with the lessons learned and provides practical recommendations on optimization techniques that are believed to be most appropriate.
