Accelerating high-resolution weather models with deep-learning hardware

Conference item

The next generation of weather and climate models will have an unprecedented level of resolution and model complexity, and running these models efficiently will require taking advantage of future supercomputers and heterogeneous hardware. In this paper, we investigate the use of mixed-precision hardware that supports floating-point operations at double-, single- and half-precision. In particular, we investigate the potential use of the NVIDIA Tensor Core, a mixed-precision matrix-matrix multiplier mainly developed for use in deep learning, to accelerate the calculation of the Legendre transforms in the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), one of the leading global weather forecast models. In the IFS, the Legendre transform is one of the most expensive model components and dominates the computational cost for simulations at a very high resolution. We investigate the impact of mixed-precision arithmetic in IFS simulations of operational complexity through software emulation. Through a targeted but minimal use of double-precision arithmetic we are able to use either half-precision arithmetic or mixed half/single-precision arithmetic for almost all of the calculations in the Legendre transform without affecting forecast skill.

Authors: Hatfield, S; Chantry, M; Duben, P; Palmer, T

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery
• Host title: PASC '19 Proceedings of the Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference
• Journal: Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing
• Article number: 1
• Publication date: 2019-06-12
• Acceptance date: 2019-03-31
• DOI: 10.1145/3324989.3325711