HiFlow3: A Hardware-Aware Parallel Finite Element Package

The goal of this paper is to describe the hardware-aware parallel C++ finite element package HiFlow3. HiFlow3 aims at providing a powerful platform for simulating processes modelled by partial differential equations. Our vision is to solve boundary value problems in an appropriate way by coupling numerical simulations with modern software design and state-of-the-art hardware technologies. The main functionalities for mapping the mathematical model into parallel software are implemented in the three core modules Mesh, DoF/FEM and Linear Algebra (LA). Parallelism is realized on two levels. The modules provide efficient MPI-based distributed data structures to achieve performance on large HPC systems but also on stand-alone workstations. Additionally, the hardware-aware cross-platform approach in the LA module accelerates the solution process by exploiting the computing power from emerging technologies like multi-core CPUs and GPUs. In this context performance evaluation on different hardware-architectures will be demonstrated.