Towards a real-time modeling of global ocean waves by the fully GPU-accelerated spectral wave model WAM6-GPU

The spectral wave model WAM (Cycle 6) is a commonly-used code package for ocean wave modeling. However, it is still a challenge to include it into the long-term earth system modeling due to huge computing requirement. In this study we have successfully developed a GPU-accelerated version of the WAM model that can run all its computing-demanding components on GPUs, with a significant performance increase compared with its original CPU version. The power of GPU computing has been unleashed through substantial efforts of code refactoring, which reduces the computing time of a 7-day global 1/10° wave modeling to 7.6 minutes in a revolutionary way. The study provides an approach to energy-efficient computing for ocean wave modeling. A preliminary evaluation suggests that approximately 90 % of power can be saved.