Open, Any-Platform, Leadership-Scale Particle-in-Cell Simulations for Everyone


Open, Any-Platform, Leadership-Scale Particle-in-Cell Simulations for Everyone

Huebl, A.; Widera, R.; Pausch, R.; Garten, M.; Debus, A.; Goethel, I.; Matthes, A.; Worpitz, B.; Starke, S.; Kelling, J.; Kossagk, S.; Bastrakov, S.; Kluge, T.; Juckeland, G.; Schramm, U.; Cowan, T. E.; Bussmann, M.

PIConGPU is a fully open, community-driven, 3D and 2D3V particle-in-cell code for the age of heterogeneous, many-core driven supercomputing. Running from a single source C++ code base PIConGPU supports both "legacy" CPU architectures as well as modern and highly parallel architectures such as OpenPOWER, XeonPHI, and Nvidia GPUs.

Especially the latter enable few-hour turnaround full 3D simulations for complex studies such as laser-ion acceleration. The resulting dramatic demands in post-processing (PBytes+) are efficiently addressed with implemented in-situ data reduction techniques. Those allow asking e.g. for a wide range of observables relevant for experiments - up to 100x during the time frame of an actual beam time. This is complemented by modern methods for photon generation, transport, and X-ray interaction.

Driving, re-using and publishing performance-portable libraries, PIConGPU aims to provide documented, installable and re-usable software components for the community, well suited for open data (openPMD) and open science workflows without restrictions. Latest developments further include a python-centric, extensive framework for specific experiments, which provides all of the above in an intuitive, non-expert user interface.

Keywords: PIConGPU; PIC; Open Software; LPA; 3D3V; particle-in-cell; performance portability; SaaS

  • Poster
    45th EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, 02.-06.07.2018, Prague, Czech Republic

Permalink: https://www.hzdr.de/publications/Publ-27963
Publ.-Id: 27963