PGI Accelerator Compilers Add OpenACC Support for x86 Multicore CPUs

By John Russell

October 29, 2015

NVIDIA today announced availability of its newest PGI Accelerator Fortran, C and C++ compilers (version 15.10) now with support for OpenACC directives-based parallel programming standard on x86 architecture multicore microprocessors. The new compilers allow OpenACC-enabled source code to be compiled for parallel execution on a multicore CPU or a GPU accelerator.

“Our goal is to enable HPC developers to easily port applications across all major CPU and accelerator platforms with uniformly high performance using a common source code base,” said Douglas Miles, director of PGI Compilers & Tools at NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). “This capability will be particularly important in the race towards exascale computing in which there will be a variety of system architectures requiring a more flexible application programming approach.”

This newest PGI feature compiles OpenACC compute regions for parallel execution across all of the cores in an x86 processor or multi-socket server. The cores are treated in aggregate as a shared-memory accelerator, eliminating all data movement overhead in the resulting OpenACC programs. By default the compiler generates code that uses all the available cores in the system, and several methods exist for programmers to control and fine-tune this behavior.

While this release targets current x86 machines, NVIDIA also outlined the timing for PGI OpenACC compiler support for IBM POWER, Intel’s Knight’s Landing, and ARM architectures.

“We’re already shipping preproduction POWER compilers to DOE. customers. You’ll see a beta release of those compilers early in 2016 and a production release in mid-to-late 2016,” said Miles. “For Knights Landing, we don’t have hardware yet and need it to work with it first. We’re running today on dual socket 36-core Haswell servers and seeing very good performance, but there are aspects [to Xeon Phi] like AVX-512 support that we expect will take some adaptations.” NVIDIA’s roadmap indicates Xeon Phi support sometime in 2016 and ARM in 2017.

Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 6.45.34 PMAs part of the product rollout NVIDIA provided two substantial HPC community customer testimonials.

“We were extremely impressed that we can run OpenACC on a CPU with no code change and get equivalent performance to our OpenMP/MPI implementation, and get 4x faster performance when running on a GPU,” said Wayne Gaudin of the U.K.’s Atomic Weapons Establishment. “From the perspective of performance portability and code future proofing, this is an excellent result.”

“Porting HPC applications from one platform to another is one of the most significant costs in the adoption of breakthrough hardware technologies,” said Buddy Bland, project director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “OpenACC for multicore x86 CPUs provides continuity and code portability from existing CPU-only and GPU-enabled applications from machines like Titan to all of DOE’s upcoming major systems as well as portability among those systems.”

Clearly program and performance portability are critical in the march towards exascale and compilers able to support multiple processor architectures are essential. Key benefits of running OpenACC on multicore CPUs include:

  • Effective utilization of all cores of a multicore CPU or multi-socket server for parallel execution
  • Common programming model across CPUs and GPUs in Fortran, C and C++
  • Rapid exploitation of existing multicore parallelism in a program using the KERNELS directive, which enables incremental optimization for parallel execution
  • Scalable performance across multicore CPUs and GPUs

Growing Momentum for OpenACC
There are now more than 10,000 developers using OpenACC according to NVIDIA. Miles cited recent hackathons across a variety of scientific including where applications have been accelerated with OpenACC in such diverse fields as MRI image reconstruction (PowerGrid), computational fluid dynamics (INCOMP3D, HiPSTAR and Numeca), cosmology and astrophysics (RAMSES, CASTRO and MAESTRO), quantum chemistry (LSDALTON), computational physics (NekCEM) and more.

In addition, Gaussian, Inc. has announced that it is using OpenACC to port the GAUSSIAN computational chemistry application to accelerators. At the recent iCAS2 conference on climate and weather in Annecy, France, Meteosuisse, the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, announced the deployment of a GPU-accelerated version of COSMO, the world’s first production weather forecasting application running on GPU accelerators.

NVIDIA PGI Performance, V 15.10Miles cited results from a recent poll of 150 OpenACC developers in which 94 percent of the respondents reported getting a speedup when running on an accelerator, and over 90 percent of the users would recommend OpenACC. PGI version 15.10 is available for download starting today said Miles.

NVIDIA also released a few performance metrics for accelerating popular application using the new PGI compilers.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire