Sponsored by the MFEM project, the FEM@LLNL Seminar Series focuses on finite element research and applications talks of interest to the MFEM community.
On November 8, 2022, Garth Wells of the University of Cambridge presented "FEniCSx: Design of the Next Generation FEniCS Libraries for Finite Element Methods." The FEniCS Project provides libraries for solving partial differential equations using the finite element method. An aim of the FEniCS Project has been to provide high-performance solver environments that closely mirror mathematical syntax, with the hypothesis that high-level representations means that solvers are faster to write, easier to debug, and can deliver faster runtime performance than is reasonably possible by hand. Using domain-specific languages and code generation techniques, arguably the FEniCS libraries delivered on these goals for a set of problems. However, over time limitations, including performance and extensibility, become clear and maintainability/sustainability became an issue. Building on experiences from the FEniCS libraries, I will present and discuss the design on the next generation of tools, FEniCSx. The new design retains strengths of the past approach, and addresses limitations using new designs and new tools. Solvers can be written in C++ or Python, and a number of design changes allow the creation of flexible, fast solvers in Python. In the second part of my presentation, I will discuss high-performance finite element kernels (limited to CPUs on this occasion), motivated by the Center for Efficient Exascale Discretizations "bake-off" problems, and which would not have been possible in the original FEniCS libraries. Double, single and half-precision kernels are considered, and results include (i) the observation that kernels with vector intrinsics can be slower than auto-vectorised kernels for common cases, and (ii) a cache-aware performance model which is remarkably accurate in predicting performance across architectures.
Learn more about MFEM at mfem.org/ and view the seminar speaker lineup at mfem.org/seminar/.
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