ACCELERATION OF FINITE ELEMENT COMPUTATION FOR SEISMIC WAVE PROPAGATION USING GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT

Abstract

This study investigates the possibility of acceleration of finite element method (FEM) using graphics processing unit (GPU). GPU is a cluster of processors specialized for image processing. In recent years, GPU’s computing power for simple calculation becomes higher than CPU’s. The use of GPU is quite common in finite difference analysis. Application of GPU to FEM, however, is considered difficult from the viewpoint of large amount of memory access. In this study, an attempt is made to introduce GPU computing to FEM in terms of frequency response analysis of two-dimensional wave propagation problem.