Embarrassingly Parallel GPU Based Matrix Inversion Algorithm for Big Climate Data Assimilation

Abstract

Attempts to harness the big climate data that come from high-resolution model output and advanced sensors to provide more accurate and rapidly-updated weather prediction, call for innovations in the existing data assimilation systems. Matrix inversion is a key operation in a majority of data assimilation techniques. Hence, this article presents out-of-core CUDA implementation of an iterative method of matrix inversion. The results show significant speed up for even square matrices of size 1024 X 1024 and more, without sacrificing the accuracy of the results. In a similar test environment, the comparison of this approach with a direct method such as the Gauss-Jordan approach, modified to process large matrices that cannot be processed directly within a single kernel call shows that the former is twice as efficient as the latter. This acceleration is attributed to the division-free design and the embarrassingly parallel nature of every sub-task of the algorithm. The parallel algorithm has been designed to be highly scalable when implemented with multiple GPUs for handling large matrices.