Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 210, 17-31 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01635-x

Review

An introduction to multi-GPU programming for physicists

¹ Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, National Research Council of Italy  
² NVIDIA Corporation  

^a e-mail: m.bernaschi@iac.cnr.it

Received: 30 April 2012
Revised: 25 June 2012
Published online: 6 September 2012

Abstract

We present and compare different approaches for using multiple Graphics Processing Units in the simulation of physical systems. As benchmarks we consider the time required to update a single spin of the 3D Heisenberg spin glass model, by using both the Over-relaxation and the Heat Bath algorithms, and the solution of a Poisson equation by using a finite-difference method. The results show that a suitable combination of techniques allows to hide almost completely the communication overhead by using the CPU as a communication coprocessor of the GPU. Large scale simulations on clusters of GPUs can be efficiently carried out by following the same approach for other applications where a clear cut exists between bulk and boundaries data.