Testing and benchmarking emerging supercomputers via the MFC flow solver

Abstract: Deploying new supercomputers requires testing and evaluation via application codes. Portable, user-friendly tools enable evaluation, and the Multicomponent Flow Code (MFC), a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, addresses this need. MFC is adorned with a toolchain that automates input generation, compilation, batch job submission, regression testing, and benchmarking. The toolchain design enables users to evaluate compiler-hardware combinations for correctness and performance with limited software engineering experience. As with other PDE solvers, wall time per spatially discretized grid point serves as a figure of merit. We present MFC benchmarking results for five generations of NVIDIA GPUs, three generations of AMD GPUs, and various CPU architectures, utilizing Intel, Cray, NVIDIA, AMD, and GNU compilers. These tests have revealed compiler bugs and regressions on recent machines such as Frontier and El Capitan. MFC has benchmarked approximately 50 compute devices and 5 flagship supercomputers.