We present the implementation of a full electronic structure calculation code on a hybrid parallel architecture with graphic processing units ͑GPUs͒. This implementation is performed on a free software code based on Daubechies wavelets. Such code shows very good performances, systematic convergence properties, and an excellent efficiency on parallel computers. Our GPU-based acceleration fully preserves all these properties. In particular, the code is able to run on many cores which may or may not have a GPU associated, and thus on parallel and massive parallel hybrid machines. With double precision calculations, we may achieve considerable speedup, between a factor of 20 for some operations and a factor of 6 for the whole density functional theory code.
In this contribution we will describe in detail a Density Functional Theory method based on a Daubechies wavelets basis set, named BigDFT. We will see that, thanks to wavelet properties, this code shows high systematic convergence properties, very good performances and an excellent efficiency for parallel calculations. BigDFT code operation are also well-suited for GPU acceleration. We will discuss how the problematic of fruitfully benefit of this new technology can be match with the needs of robustness and flexibility of a complex code like BigDFT. This work may be of interest not only for expert in electronic structure calculations, but may also provide feedback to the wider community of high performance scientific computing.
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