In the high-stakes world of oil and gas exploration, the ability to accurately model and predict the location of valuable resources can mean the difference between a dry well and a gusher. High-performance computing (HPC) plays a crucial role in this process, but the complexity of HPC software often creates a barrier for domain specialists. Enter Devito Codes, a software company that's breaking down these barriers with its innovative product, Devito Pro. In a recent conversation, Devito Codes' co-founders, CEO Gerard Gorman and Director of Business Development and Strategy Paul Holzhauer, shared insights on the company's objectives and its strategic collaboration with AMD.
Driving innovation and flexibility
Devito Codes is on a mission to revolutionize high-performance computing. Central to this mission is the concept of 'performance portability', which Gorman explains as the ability of software to perform optimally across different hardware architectures. "Performance portability is at the heart of what we do," Gorman emphasized. "We want our users to have the flexibility to choose the hardware that best suits their needs without compromising performance."
Devito began as an open-source Python package that simplifies the process of high-performance computing. It allows users to define complex computations--think mathematical representations of waves propagating through Earth's subsurface--symbolically and then automatically generates and compiles optimized code that can run on a variety of platforms, including CPUs, GPUs, and clusters. This makes it easier for researchers and professionals to implement advanced computations, particularly in fields like geophysics, meteorology, computer vision, and machine learning, where these types of calculations are common.
Building on this foundation, Devito Pro offers additional tools that further enhance performance and compatibility, providing the power and flexibility to tackle complex computational challenges. Devito Pro can integrate with existing legacy codes, making it easier for users to upgrade their systems without having to rewrite their entire codebase. It also extends support to more types of hardware and offers advanced features like optimized MPI communications on GPUs, lossy data compression from/to GPUs, and performance autotuning.
"We aim to make scientists more productive by enabling them to implement and test new algorithms quickly and efficiently," Gorman shared. Devito Pro, with its ability to integrate with legacy codes and its focus on performance portability, serves as a powerful tool that bridges the gap between domain specialists and high-performance software implementation.
Making the most of the AMD GPU architecture
According to Gorman, "It's clear that AMD has been making significant investments to expanding their team with top-notch compiler developers. This has led to transformative changes in the AMD software landscape. The entire software stack is maturing at a rapid pace, and this progress is palpable when you're developing on top of it."
"Our collaboration with AMD is instrumental in improving our product," Gorman shared. "The rapid improvements in the AMD ROCm™ compiler framework due to our feedback and collaboration with AMD have been remarkable. Devito can now generate highly optimized code for AMD hardware.” This collaboration led to Devito extending its compiler support for AMD GPUs using the HIP platform, increasing performance for users who use Devito in high-performance computing and data-intensive applications.
Devito’s collaboration with AMD has also unlocked support for AMD Instinct™ MI200 Series flagship data center GPUs, which deliver high performance and efficiency for HPC and AI workloads.
Gorman expressed his regard for the relationship with AMD, stating, "Our collaboration with the AMD HPC experts has been a success. We're learning from them, improving our code, and seeing rapid improvements in performance and stability with each new release.”
Looking ahead, Devito has ambitious goals. "Our vision is to be able to generate optimized code for new hardware even before its general release," Gorman shared. "We are actively engaging with vendors while developing new hardware to achieve this goal."
Improving speed and costs for the oil and gas industry
In the context of the oil and gas industry, "Devito Pro helps in the process of computer tomography of the earth to identify subsurface materials for hydrocarbon extraction and carbon sequestration," Gorman explained. "It also speeds up the process of testing new ideas, sometimes making it ten times faster. This allows scientists to get solutions much faster and helps get product into production quicker."
The team also discussed the importance of cost in their work. Companies in the oil and gas industry spend tens of millions on compute and imaging each year. Even a small saving in performance can translate to significant cost savings. The rapid development and evolution of computer architectures present a further challenge, as companies must port hundreds of thousands, even millions of lines of code to new architectures. This is where Devito Pro's performance portability comes into play, reducing the time and cost associated with this process.
The cloud is another game-changer in this context. "The cloud provides us with the flexibility to scale our operations and meet the diverse needs of our users. It also allows us to offer our customers a choice in processor architectures, which is crucial in today's rapidly evolving technology landscape," said Holzhauer.
Challenging the dogma of high-performance computing
One of the firmly held beliefs in the world of high-performance computing is that you can't have both high performance and ease of use. However, Devito Codes is challenging this way of thinking. "We believe that you can have both," said Gorman. "With Devito Pro, we are making high-performance computing accessible to a wider audience. We are reducing the development time of high-performance code from months to days, which has a significant impact on human productivity." As we look to the future, it's clear that Devito is not just pushing the boundaries of high-performance computing in the oil and gas industry but helping to reshape them entirely.
Learn more about Devito solutions for oil and gas on AMD Instinct accelerators here
Making the ROCm™ platform even easier to adopt
For ROCm™ users and developers, AMD is continually looking for ways to make ROCm easier to use, easier to deploy on systems and to provide learning tools and technical documents to support those efforts.
Helpful Resources:
- Check out the ROCm Developer Hub, a new home for all things related to AMD ROCm platform developers and resources is here.
- The ROCm web pages provide an overview of the platform and what it includes, along with HPC & AI markets and workloads it supports.
- AMD ROCm DOCs is a portal to access everything you need to know to work with the latest ROCm versions along with API and support documentation.
- AMD Infinity Hub gives you details on ROCm supported HPC applications and ML frameworks, and how to get the latest versions and install documents. You can also access the ROCm Application Catalog there, which includes an up-to-date listing of ROCm enabled applications.
- Finally, learn more about our AMD Instinct™ MI200 Series family of accelerators and partner server solutions in our AMD Instinct Server Solutions Catalog.
Bryce Mackin is Sr. Product Marketing Mgr. for AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
All performance and cost savings claims are provided by Devito Codes and have not been independently verified by AMD. Performance and cost benefits are impacted by a variety of variables. Results herein are specific to Devito Codes and may not be typical. GD-181
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