Alya towards Exascale: Algorithmic Scalability using PSCToolkit

In this paper, we describe some work aimed at upgrading the Alya code with up-to-date parallel linear solvers capable of achieving reliability, efficiency, and scalability in the computation of the pressure field at each time step of the numerical procedure for solving an LES formulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. We developed a software module in Alya's kernel to interface the libraries included in the current version of PSCToolkit, a framework for the iterative solution of sparse linear systems on parallel distributed-memory computers by Krylov methods coupled to Algebraic MultiGrid preconditioners. The Toolkit has undergone some extensions within the EoCoE-II project with the primary goal to face the exascale challenge. Results on a realistic benchmark for airflow simulations in wind farm applications show that the PSCToolkit solvers significantly outperform the original versions of the Conjugate Gradient method available in the Alya kernel in terms of scalability and parallel efficiency and represent a very promising software layer to move the Alya code towards exascale.