SEISMIC IMAGING ON THE INTEL PARAGON

A key to reducing the risks and costs associated with oil and gas expl oration is the fast, accurate imaging of complex geologies, such as sa lt domes in the Gulf of Mexico and overthrust regions in U.S. onshore regions. Prestack depth migration generally yields the most accurate i mages, and one approach to this is to solve the scalar-wave equation u sing finite differences. Current industry computational capabilities a re insufficient for the application of finite-difference, 3-D, prestac k, depth-migration algorithms. A 3-D seismic data can be several terab ytes in size, and the multiple runs necessary to refine the velocity m odel may take many Sears. The oil companies and seismic contractors ne ed to perform complete velocity field refinements in weeks and single iterations overnight. High-performance computers and state-of-the-art algorithms and software are required to meet this need. As part of an ongoing ACTI project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, we have developed a finite-difference, 3-D prestack, depth-migration code for the Intel Paragon. The goal of this work is to demonstrate that massiv ely parallel computers (thousands of processors) can be used efficient ly for seismic imaging, and that sufficient computing power exists (or soon will exist) to make finite-difference, prestack, depth migration practical for oil and gas exploration.