The ocean model for E3SM global applications: Omega version 0.1.0 – a new high-performance computing code for exascale architectures

Abstract. Here we introduce Omega, the Ocean Model for E3SM Global Applications. Omega is a new ocean model designed to run efficiently on high performance computing (HPC) platforms, including exascale heterogeneous architectures with accelerators, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Omega is written in C++ and uses the Kokkos performance portability library. These were chosen because they are well-supported, and will help future-proof Omega for upcoming HPC architectures. Omega will eventually replace the Model for Prediction Across Scales-Ocean (MPAS-Ocean) in the US Department of Energy's Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). Omega runs on unstructured horizontal meshes with variable-resolution capability and implements the same horizontal discretization as MPAS-Ocean. In this paper, we document the design and performance of Omega Version 0.1.0 (Omega-V0), which solves the shallow water equations with passive tracers and is the first step towards the full primitive equation ocean model. On Central Processing Units (CPUs), Omega-V0 is 1.4 times faster than MPAS-Ocean with the same configuration. Omega-V0 is more efficient on GPUs than CPUs on a per-watt basis–by a factor of 5.3 on Frontier and 3.6 on Aurora, two of the world's fastest exascale computers.