Accelerating finite differences for solving a barotropic ocean model on the GPU

Abstract

The two-dimensional barotropic vorticity equation is one of basic equations of ocean dynamics. It is important to have efficient numerical solution techniques to solve this equation. In this paper, we present an implementation of a numerical solution of this equation using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The speed-up of the calculation on the GPU with respect to that on a CPU depends on the grid size but reaches a factor 50 for the highest resolution cases ($4800 \times 4800$) tested. It may therefore be efficient to use GPU's in future high-resolution ocean modeling studies.