Geodynamo and mantle convection simulations on the Earth Simulator using the Yin-Yang grid
Akira Kageyama and Masaki Yoshida
Abstract
We have developed finite difference codes based on the Yin-Yang grid for the
geodynamo simulation and the mantle convection simulation.
The Yin-Yang grid is a kind of
spherical overset grid that is composed of two identical component grids.
The intrinsic simplicity of
the mesh configuration of the Yin-Yang grid enables us
to develop highly optimized simulation codes on massively parallel supercomputers.
The Yin-Yang geodynamo code has achieved 15.2 Tflops with 4096 processors on the Earth Simulator.
This represents 46% of the theoretical peak performance.
The Yin-Yang mantle code has enabled us to carry out mantle convection simulations
in realistic regimes with a Rayleigh number of 107
including strongly
temperature-dependent viscosity with spatial contrast up to 106.