| Title | RECENT EXPERIENCES WITH OVERCOMING TOUGH2 MEMORY AND SPEED LIMITS |
|---|---|
| Authors | Angus Yeh, Adrian Croucher, Michael J. O'Sullivan |
| Year | 2011 |
| Conference | New Zealand Geothermal Workshop |
| Keywords | geothermal, simulation, modelling, memory limit, speed, performance, parallel computing, TOUGH2, AUTOUGH2, TOUGH2-MP, Linux, Windows, 32-bit, 64-bit |
| Abstract | Modellers face two issues when they are increasing the complexity and size of models: memory limit and computational speed. TOUGH2/AUTOUGH2 users on 32-bit computer systems are limited to 2 GB of memory, the amount required for a 3-D model with approximately 80,000 blocks. We discuss here how this limit can be avoided by using a 64-bit computer architecture. We also discuss modifications to the AUTOUGH2 code to make memory use more efficient by making the memory allocation dynamic. The use of new compilers and new hardware helps to improve the speed of TOUGH2 simulations. One can achieve even more improvement by using the parallelised version, TOUGH2-MP. We have tested the speedup of TOUGH2-MP on a variety of machines, and results are good. With the advancement of multi-core personal computers, great speed-up of TOUGH2 simulations by using a parallel simulator is now very practical and affordable. |