Performance analysis of DEM simulations on modern supercomputers: a case study

Kulkarni K, Ravedutti Lucio Machado R, Safaei B, Köstler H (2026)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2026

Journal

International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17445760.2026.2636485

Abstract

Large-scale Discrete Element simulations are highly compute-intensive, and achieving energy-efficient performance remains a major challenge for next-generation exascale systems. This work evaluates the performance and energy characteristics of DEM kernels on multinode systems using MESA-PD within waLBerla and P4IRS, a portable framework optimized for CPUs and GPUs. While MESA-PD efficiently supports CPU simulations, it lacks GPU portability. Integrating P4IRS into waLBerla enables GPU-accelerated and portable DEM execution. Using a settling-spheres benchmark, we study performance and energy consumption across different systems, achieving up to 90% weak-scaling efficiency on 16 CPU nodes and demonstrating scalability to 256 GPUs.

Authors with CRIS profile

Kajol Kulkarni Lehrstuhl für Informatik 10 (Systemsimulation) (LSS) Rafael Ravedutti Lucio Machado Lehrstuhl für Informatik 10 (Systemsimulation) (LSS) Behzad Safaei Lehrstuhl für Informatik 10 (Systemsimulation) (LSS) Harald Köstler Lehrstuhl für Informatik 10 (Systemsimulation) (LSS)

How to cite

APA:

Kulkarni, K., Ravedutti Lucio Machado, R., Safaei, B., & Köstler, H. (2026). Performance analysis of DEM simulations on modern supercomputers: a case study. International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems. https://doi.org/10.1080/17445760.2026.2636485

MLA:

Kulkarni, Kajol, et al. "Performance analysis of DEM simulations on modern supercomputers: a case study." International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems (2026).

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