The purpose of gce is to get science on to graphics cards (GPUs) fast. Specifically, gce provides a simple framework to parallelize an FDTD simulation on to a massively parallel environment (one or multiple GPUs).
gce allows users to specify their simulation in Matlab using the gce-client collection of matlab files in this directory. All that is needed is a valid installation of Matlab.
Once a simulation is specified, it can be executed on a gce server. A simple, public server is provided by the Jelena Vuckovic group.
- Download gce-client
- Unzip it into a directory (e.g. /gce-client).
- Start Matlab (and change working directory to /gce-client)
Now, let's try the tutorial! Execute the following commands in Matlab:
cd tutorial
path(path, '..'); % Include the gce-client files.
thermal_example % Run the tutorial.
You should now have a file called first_gce_sim.h5 in the current directory. Use your web browser to go to brainiac5.stanford.edu and follow the instructions to simulate it there.
Once the simulation has completed and you've downloaded the simulated file to the current Matlab directory, plot a pretty movie of the results using
thermal_plot('downloaded-file.h5'); % Make sure that this is the simulated file!
Now you're ready to do FDTD simulation really quickly. To make your own gce simulation,
- Look at the code in
thermal_example.m, and - Read the rules for gce operations in
OP_RULES.markdown.
Good luck!
You may email jesselu at stanford dot edu for additional help.