Kiel 2011 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 15: Theorie/Modellierung I

P 15.6: Talk

Wednesday, March 30, 2011, 15:40–15:55, HS C

PIConGPU - A scalable GPGPU implementation of the particle-in-cell algorithm — •Heiko Burau¹, Florian Berninger¹, Alexander Debus¹, Thomas Kluge¹, Axel Jochmann¹, Arie Irman¹, Ulrich Schramm¹, Thomas E. Cowan¹, René Widera², Felix Schmitt², Wolfgang Hönig², Guido Juckeland², Wolfgang Nagel², Patrick Kilian³, Urs Ganse³, Stefan Siegel³, Felix Spanier³, Benjamin Ragan-Kelley⁴, John Verboncoeur⁴, and Michael Bussmann¹ — ¹HZDR, Dresden, Germany — ²ZIH, Dresden, Germany — ³University of Würzburg, Germany — ⁴UC Berkeley, CA, USA

We present PIConGPU, an efficient and scalable implementation of the particle-in-cell algorithm for GPGPUs. We discuss the main building blocks of PIConGPU, the data access patterns used for both particle and field data and the communication model that allows to hide the large latency of network communication between GPGPU nodes on a cluster. PIConGPU provides a general framework which can be used to study both relativistic and nonrelativistic plasmas. We show first results on relativistic laser wakefield acceleration of electrons in underdense plasmas and on the progress of integrating new physics models. The fast response time of the code makes it possible to receive results in hours compared to weeks with particle-in-cell codes running on mid-size commodity clusters. With this increase in computational speed extensive parameter scans become possible even for large physical systems.