Comparison of Graphcore IPUs and Nvidia GPUsfor cosmology applications

This paper represents the first investigation of the suitability and performance of Graphcore Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs) for deep learning applications in cosmology. It presents the benchmark between a Nvidia V100 GPU and a Graphcore MK1 (GC2) IPU on three cosmological use cases: a classical deep neural network and a Bayesian neural network (BNN) for galaxy shape estimation, and a generative network for galaxy images production. The results suggest that IPUs could be a potential avenue to address the increasing computation needs in cosmology.