A novel hybrid CPU–GPU generalized eigensolver for electronic structure calculations based on fine-grained memory aware tasks

The adoption of hybrid CPU–GPU nodes in traditional supercomputing platforms such as the Cray-XK6 opens acceleration opportunities for electronic structure calculations in materials science and chemistry applications, where medium-sized generalized eigenvalue problems must be solved many times. These eigenvalue problems are too small to effectively solve on distributed systems, but can benefit from the massive computing power concentrated on a single-node, hybrid CPU–GPU system. However, hybrid systems call for the development of new algorithms that efficiently exploit heterogeneity and massive parallelism of not just GPUs, but of multicore/manycore CPUs as well. Addressing these demands, we developed a generalized eigensolver featuring novel algorithms of increased computational intensity (compared with the standard algorithms), decomposition of the computation into fine-grained memory aware tasks, and their hybrid execution. The resulting eigensolvers are state-of-the-art in high-performance computing, significantly outperforming existing libraries. We describe the algorithm and analyze its performance impact on applications of interest when different fractions of eigenvectors are needed by the host electronic structure code.