Spectral Domain Decomposition Using Local Fourier Basis: Application to Ultrasound Simulation on a Cluster of GPUs

The simulation of ultrasound wave propagation through biological tissue has a wide range of practical applications. However, large grid sizes are generally needed to capture the phenomena of interest. Here, a novel approach to reduce the computational complexity is presented. The model uses an accelerated k-space pseudospectral method which enables more than one hundred GPUs to be exploited to solve problems with more than 3 ×10 grid points. The classic communication bottleneck of Fourier spectral methods, all-to-all global data exchange, is overcome by the application of domain decomposition using local Fourier basis. Compared to global domain decomposition, for a grid size of 1536 × 1024 × 2048, this reduces the simulation time by a factor of 7.5 and the simulation cost by a factor of 3.8.