Terraneo—mantle convection beyond a trillion degrees of freedom

Simon Bauer, Hans Peter Bunge, Daniel Drzisga, Siavash Ghelichkhan, Markus Huber, Nils Kohl, Marcus Mohr, Ulrich Rüde, Dominik Thönnes, Barbara Wohlmuth

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Simulation of mantle convection on planetary scales is considered a grand-challenge application even in the exascale era. The reason being the enormous spatial and temporal scales that must be resolved in the computation as well as the complexities of realistic models and the large parameter uncertainties that need to be handled by advanced numerical methods. This contribution reports on the TerraNeo project which delivered novel matrix-free geometric multigrid solvers for the Stokes system that forms the core of mantle convection models. In TerraNeo the hierarchical hybrid grids paradigm was employed to demonstrate that scalability can be achieved when solving the Stokes system with more than ten trillion (1.1 ⋅ 1013) degrees of freedom even on present-day peta-scale supercomputers. Novel concepts were developed to ensure resilience of algorithms even in case of hard faults and new scheduling algorithms proposed for ensemble runs arising in Multilevel Monte Carlo algorithms for uncertainty quantification. The prototype framework was used to investigate geodynamic questions such as high velocity asthenospheric channels and dynamic topography and to perform adjoint inversions. We also describe the redesign of our software to support more advanced discretizations, adaptivity, and highly asynchronous execution while ensuring sustainability and flexibility for future extensions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering
PublisherSpringer
Pages569-610
Number of pages42
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering
Volume136
ISSN (Print)1439-7358
ISSN (Electronic)2197-7100

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Terraneo—mantle convection beyond a trillion degrees of freedom'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this