Abstract
In this study, we introduce a novel implementation method of finite element method (FEM) targeting the Cell which has a software controlled local memory. In recent days, developers of scientific or engineering numerical simulation code suffer from the big latency of data transfer between a processor and main memory, and power consumption. In order to overcome these problems, several researchers have proposed new computer architecture, which combines software controlled local memory and SIMD processing unit. FEM is the one of the most famous numerical simulation method especially for the engineering. Such new computer architecture is, however, less effective for FEM than the other application. The Cell, which is developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, is well know as the accelerator of the Roadrunner which is the fastest computer in the Top500 supercomputer list, and is only existing processor which has software controlled local memory. In this study we developed new FEM implementation method which provides faster computation than conventional method by reducing main memory access frequency. As a result, we achieved 10 times acceleration by comparing with ordinal finite element code, which run on PowerPC processing unit (PPU) of the Cell.
