Performance Analysis and Optimizations Techniques for Legacy Code Numerical Simulations

Abstract

Numerical simulations used today by scientists in various disciplines, are frequently based on implementations created when the predominant compu­ting hardware was sequential by design. In this simulations, new features are added or updated, when new discoveries are made, but the computational implementation remains unchanged, not taking advantage of modern hardware architectures. This “legacy code” study cases, presents the opportunity to create a set of techniques and tools, oriented to perform optimizations from a computa­tional and software engineering points of view. As an example, in conjunction with an astrophysics research group, a real-world case numerical integrator optimization is presented, were these techniques were applied, showing the results obtained.