Strengthening of Parallel Computation Performance of Integrated Earthquake Simulation

Abstract

The parallel scalability of the seismic response analysis (SRA) module of the Integrated Earthquake Simulator (IES) is enhanced to achieve near-ideal scalability. In previous studies, the SRA module was enhanced with standard distributed memory parallel computing techniques. However, some bottlenecks seriously hinder its scalability. Parallel computing performance is significantly improved by eradicating all the bottlenecks; input/output modules are enhanced with advanced MPI functions, a static load balancer is introduced, and the link to seismic structure analysis programs is strengthened. Details of the bottlenecks, remedies implemented, and other performance enhancements are presented. With a moderate size problem, it is demonstrated that the modified SRA module has near-ideal scalability. Further, it is shown that this near-ideal scalability is sustained even in the simulation of a large urban area.