Duke, DJ, Hosseini, F and Carr, H (2014) Parallel Computation of Multifield Topology: Experience of Haskell in a Computational Science Application. In: Sheeran, M and Newton, R, (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Functional High-Performance Computing. The 3rd ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Functional High-Performance Computing, 04 Sep 2014, Gothenburg, Sweden. ACM Press , pp. 11-21. ISBN 978-1-4503-3040-4
Abstract
Codes for computational science and downstream analysis (visualization and/or statistical modelling) have historically been dominated by imperative thinking, but this situation is evolving, both through adoption of higher-level tools such as Matlab, and through some adoption of functional ideas in the next generation of toolkits being driven by the vision of extreme-scale computing. However, this is still a long way from seeing a functional language like Haskell used in a live application. This paper makes three contributions to functional programming in computational science. First, we describe how use of Haskell was interleaved in the development of the first practical approach to multifield topology, and its application to the analysis of data from nuclear simulations that has led to new insight into fission. Second, we report subsequent developments of the functional code (i) improving sequential performance to approach that of an imperative implementation, and (ii) the introduction of parallelism through four skeletons exhibiting good scaling and different time/space trade-offs. Finally we consider the broader question of how, where, and why functional programming may - or may not - find further use in computational science.
Metadata
Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Keywords: | Computational topology; joint contour net; Haskell; performance |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Computing (Leeds) > Institute for Computational and Systems Science (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Sep 2014 10:46 |
Last Modified: | 26 Mar 2016 19:14 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2636228.2636237 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | ACM Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1145/2636228.2636237 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:79906 |