Title
Visual Simulation Of Soil-Microbial System Using Gpgpu Technology
Abstract
General Purpose (use of) Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) is a promising technology for simulation upscaling; in particular for bottom-up modelling approaches seeking to translate micro-scale system processes to macro-scale properties. Many existing simulations of soil ecosystems do not recover the emergent system scale properties and this may be a consequence of "missing" information at finer scales. Interpretation of model output can be challenging and we advocate the "built-in" visual simulation afforded by GPGPU implementations. We apply this GPGPU approach to a reaction-diffusion soil ecosystem model with the intent of linking micro (micron) and core (cm) spatial scales to investigate how microbes respond to changing environments and the consequences on soil respiration. The performance is evaluated in terms of computational speed up, spatial upscaling and visual feedback. We conclude that a GPGPU approach can significantly improve computational efficiency and offers the potential added benefit of visual immediacy. For massive spatial domains distribution over GPU devices may still be required.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.3390/computation3010058
COMPUTATION
Keywords
Field
DocType
General Purpose (use of) Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU), mathematical model, soil-microbe complex, X-Ray CT, reaction-diffusion
Graphics,General purpose,Computer science,Theoretical computer science,Implementation,General-purpose computing on graphics processing units,Ecosystem model,Distributed computing,Speedup
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
3
1
2079-3197
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.44
2
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ruth Falconer131.59
Alasdair N. Houston210.78