Load-balancing algorithms for climate models

Implementations of climate models on scalable parallel computer systems can suffer from load imbalances due to temporal and spatial variations in the amount of computation required for physical parameterizations such as solar radiation and convective adjustment. We have developed specialized techniques for correcting such imbalances. These techniques are incorporated in a general-purpose, programmable load-balancing library that allows the mapping of computation to processors to be specified as a series of maps generated by a programmer-supplied load-balancing module. The communication required to move from one map to another is performed automatically by the library, without programmer intervention. In this paper, we describe the load-balancing problem and the techniques that we have developed to solve it. We also describe specific load-balancing algorithms that we have developed for PCCM2, a scalable parallel implementation of the Community Climate Model, and present experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness of these algorithms on parallel computers