This module implements the first version of the DL_MESO_DPD Mesoscale Simulation Package, with multiple NVidia Graphical Processing Units (GPUs).
In this module the main framework of a multi-GPU version of the DL_MESO_DPD code has been developed. The exchange of data between GPUs overlaps with the computation of the forces for the internal cells of each partition (a domain decomposition approach based on the MPI parallel version of DL_MESO_DPD has been followed). The current implementation is a proof of concept and relies on slow transfers of data from the GPU to the host and vice-versa. Faster implementations will be explored in future modules.
Future plans include benchmarking of the code with different data transfer implementations other than the current (trivial) GPU-host-GPU transfer mechanism. These are: of Peer To Peer communication within a node, CUDA-aware MPI, and CUDA-aware MPI with Direct Remote Memory Access (DRMA).
Practical application and exploitation of the code
Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) is routinely used in an industrial context to find out the static and dynamic behaviour of soft-matter systems. Examples include colloidal dispersions, emulsions and other amphiphilic systems, polymer solutions, etc. Such materials are being produced or processed in industries like cosmetics, food, pharmaceutics, biomedicine, etc. Porting the method to GPUs is thus inherently useful in order to provide cheaper calculations.
See more information in the industry success story recently reported by E-CAM.
