Performance Characterization of a Vector Architecture for Seismic Applications

Summary Explicit time-domain finite-difference (TD-FD) methods are largely used in seismic exploration. They are at the heart of wave-equation based geophysical algorithms such as Reverse Time Migration and Full Waveform Inversion. Due to the ever-increasing amount of acquired seismic data and the need for higher resolution to optimize oil production, it is crucial to deploy TD-FD on High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms. In this work, we explore the performance reachable on vector architectures. The study is done on a traditional scalar CPU to get a performance baseline, and on a vector solution which was heavily used in the past by the O&G industry.