The Open Computing Abstraction Layer for Parallel Complex Systems Modeling on Many-Core Systems

This article introduces OpenCAL, a new open source computing abstraction layer for multi- and many-core computing based on the Extended Cellular Automata general formalism. OpenCAL greatly simplifies the implementation of structured grid applications, contextually making parallelism transparent to the user. Different OpenMP- and OpenCL-based implementations have been developed, together with a preliminary MPI-based distributed memory version, which is currently under development. The system software architecture is presented and underlying data structures and algorithms described. Numerical correctness and efficiency have been assessed by considering the SciddicaT Computational Fluid Dynamics landslide simulation model as reference example. Eventually, a comprehensive study has been performed to devise the best platform for execution as a function of numerical complexity and computational domain extent. Results obtained have highlighted the OpenCAL's potential for numerical models development and their execution on the most suitable high-performance parallel computational device.