TY - JOUR
T1 - Toward exascale climate modelling
T2 - a python DSL approach to ICON's (icosahedral non-hydrostatic) dynamical core (icon-exclaim v0.2.0)
AU - Dipankar, Anurag
AU - Bianco, Mauro
AU - Bukenberger, Mona
AU - Ehrengruber, Till
AU - Farabullini, Nicoletta
AU - Fuhrer, Oliver
AU - Gopal, Abishek
AU - Hupp, Daniel
AU - Jocksch, Andreas
AU - Kellerhals, Samuel
AU - Kroll, Clarissa A.
AU - Lapillonne, Xavier
AU - Leclair, Matthieu
AU - Luz, Magdalena
AU - Muller, Christoph
AU - Ong, Chia Rui
AU - Osuna, Carlos
AU - Pothapakula, Praveen
AU - Prein, Andreas
AU - Rothlin, Matthias
AU - Sawyer, William
AU - Schar, Christoph
AU - Schemm, Sebastian
AU - Serafini, Giacomo
AU - Vogt, Hannes
AU - Weber, Ben
AU - Wills, Robert C. Jnglin
AU - Gruber, Nicolas
AU - Schulthess, Thomas C.
PY - 2026/1/22
Y1 - 2026/1/22
N2 - A refactored atmospheric dynamical core of the ICON model implemented in GT4Py, a Python-based domain-specific language designed for performance portability across heterogeneous CPU-GPU architectures, is presented. Integrated within the existing Fortran infrastructure, the new GT4Py dynamical core is shown to exceed ICON OpenACC performance. A multi-tiered testing strategy has been implemented to ensure numerical correctness and scientific reliability of the model code. Validation has been performed through global aquaplanet and prescribed sea-surface temperature simulations to demonstrate model's capability to simulate mesoscale and its interaction with the larger-scale at km-scale grid spacing. This work establishes a foundation for architecture-agnostic ICON global climate and weather model, and highlights poor strong scaling as a potential bottleneck in scaling toward exascale performance.
AB - A refactored atmospheric dynamical core of the ICON model implemented in GT4Py, a Python-based domain-specific language designed for performance portability across heterogeneous CPU-GPU architectures, is presented. Integrated within the existing Fortran infrastructure, the new GT4Py dynamical core is shown to exceed ICON OpenACC performance. A multi-tiered testing strategy has been implemented to ensure numerical correctness and scientific reliability of the model code. Validation has been performed through global aquaplanet and prescribed sea-surface temperature simulations to demonstrate model's capability to simulate mesoscale and its interaction with the larger-scale at km-scale grid spacing. This work establishes a foundation for architecture-agnostic ICON global climate and weather model, and highlights poor strong scaling as a potential bottleneck in scaling toward exascale performance.
KW - Earth system
KW - Programming-model
KW - Performance
KW - Kilometer
UR - https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=ncarpurestagin&SrcAuth=WosAPI&KeyUT=WOS:001666802100001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=WOS_CPL
U2 - 10.5194/gmd-19-713-2026
DO - 10.5194/gmd-19-713-2026
M3 - Article
SN - 1991-959X
VL - 19
SP - 713
EP - 729
JO - Geoscientific Model Development
JF - Geoscientific Model Development
IS - 2
ER -