PICKSC News Archives

KNL Timings

May 10, 2018 by Benjamin Winjum

PICKSC researchers have been updating our software to take full advantage of the many-core Intel Knight’s Landing (KNL) nodes.

An OpenMP 3D electrostatic code from UPIC 2.0 has achieved a performance of 850 psec/particle-step on a single Intel KNL node. On a large memory KNL such as the 96 GB node on the Cori machine at NERSC, a PIC simulation with a billion particles will run in about one second per time step.

A new branch of QuickPIC (described here) has also been compiled and run on Cori at NERSC. On a single KNL node with 68 threads, the total time spent on one particle per step is 3.82 ns (including 1 iteration).

Fortran OpenPMD File Writers

May 10, 2018 by Benjamin Winjum

We have written an open source program that contains Fortran interfaces for parallel writing of 2D/3D mesh field data and particle data into HDF5 files using the OpenPMD standard. The software is open source and available on our GitHub repositories here.

New QuickPIC branch

May 10, 2018 by Benjamin Winjum

We have added a new branch in our QuickPIC repository (available here).

In addition to the MPI-OpenMP hybrid algorithm, this branch contains new 2D particle subroutines (in source/part2d_lib77.f) using vectorization algorithm. The vectorization algorithm is originally from the UPIC Skeleton Code. The algorithm in QuickPIC is transformed from the original one to one that solves the Quasi-Static-Approximation PIC model. It also has been modified to enable MPI. A simple profiling tool is added in the code to show the computing time consumed on the interested procedures. The code can be compiled and run on Cori at NERSC. On a single KNL node with 68 threads, the total time spent on one particle per step is 3.82 ns (including 1 iteration).

First Annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop

October 12, 2017 by Benjamin Winjum

On September 18 to 20, the first annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop was held at UCLA. The aims of the workshop were to introduce users to the new features and design of our plasma simulation code OSIRIS 4.0, to allow OSIRIS users to share experiences and discuss best practices, to identify useful test and demonstration problems, to discuss how to transition from being a user to an active developer, and to identify areas for near term software improvements and a community strategy for carrying out necessary developments.

There were over 60 attendees from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, with widely ranging experiences and expertise. It was a great success, with many discussions and new collaborations and friendships.

The agenda, as well as copies of many of the talks, can be found on our Presentations page. A summary of the workshop will be posted soon.

The OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop will be held annually and alternate between IST in Portugal and UCLA in the U.S. With an active and growing user base that includes over 25 research groups and over 100 users worldwide, the continued success of OSIRIS will benefit greatly from maintaining active community engagement and involvement. Not only is OSIRIS a premiere particle-in-cell simulation tool, it is also a continuously evolving and very complex piece of software. We recognize that it is essential to communicate effectively with our user base and to develop tools which allow us to effectively manage feature development, code dissemination, and code documentation.

If you are interested in becoming a part of the OSIRIS community as a user and/or developer please contact us at picksc.org@gmail.com.

Announcement for OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop

June 30, 2017 by Benjamin Winjum

The UCLA Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Center (http://picksc.idre.ucla.edu) and the IST Extreme Plasma Physics Team in Portugal (http://epp.tecnico.ulisboa.pt) are pleased to announce the first annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop. The location will alternate between UCLA and IST with the first workshop to be held at UCLA September 18-20. This meeting is open to all who have gained access to or are interested in gaining access to the OSIRIS source code and data analysis tools through an MoU between either UCLA or IST.

The goals of the workshop are:

To introduce users to the new features and design of OSIRIS 4.0.
To allow users of OSIRIS to share experiences and discuss best practices.
To identify useful test and demonstration problems.
To discuss how to transition from being a user to an active developer.
Identify areas for near term software improvements and a community strategy for carrying out the necessary development.

If you are interested in attending this workshop or in getting access to OSIRIS please contact picksc.org@gmail.com.

OSIRIS is a state-of-the-art massively parallel relativistic particle-in-cell code that is now being used by roughly 100 users worldwide through more than 25 MoUs with UCLA or IST. OSIRIS results have been featured or included in 100’s of publications in journals such as Nature, Nature Physics, Physical Review Letters, and Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Over the past 20 years, the development of OSIRIS at UCLA has been partially supported by NSF, DOE, and LLNL, and at IST has been supported by the European Research Council, the Portuguese National Science Foundation (FCT), and the European Space Agency.

UPIC 2.0.2 now public

May 18, 2017 by Benjamin Winjum

The PICKSC group has released UPIC 2.0.2, an update to the first release of UPIC (2.0.1). The major new features here are namelist inputs, a full set of field diagnostics, and initialization with non-uniform densities. As before, codes can be compiled to run with 2 levels of parallelism (MPI/OpenMP) or OpenMP only.

The primary purpose of this framework is to provide trusted components for building and customizing parallel Particle-in-Cell codes for plasma simulation. The framework provides libraries as well as reference applications illustrating their use.

The public repository is available on GitHub and may be found here: UPIC-2.0 (You must be logged onto GitHub for this links to take you to a valid site).

The files for the 2D and 3D components of UPIC 2.0.2 may also be directly downloaded here on the PICKSC site.

UPIC 2.0.1 now public

February 21, 2017 by Benjamin Winjum

The PICKSC group has released UPIC 2.0.1. The primary purpose of this framework is to provide trusted components for building and customizing parallel Particle-in-Cell codes for plasma simulation. The framework provides libraries as well as reference applications illustrating their use.

The public repository is available on GitHub and may be found here: UPIC-2.0 (You must be logged onto GitHub for this links to take you to a valid site).

The files for the 2D and 3D components of UPIC 2.0.1 may also be directly downloaded here on the PICKSC site.

QuickPIC and OSHUN now public

January 9, 2017 by Benjamin Winjum

The PICKSC group has released QuickPIC and OSHUN as open-source codes.

The public repositories are available on GitHub and may be found here: QuickPIC and OSHUN. (You must be logged onto GitHub for these links to take you to a valid site).

QuickPIC is a 3D parallel (MPI & OpenMP Hybrid) Quasi-Static PIC code, which is developed based on the framework UPIC.

OSHUN is a parallel Vlasov-Fokker-Planck plasma simulation code that employs an arbitrary-order spherical harmonic velocity-space decomposition. The public repository currently houses a 1D C++ version and a 1D pure Python version (with optional C-modules for improved performance). A 2D C++ version will be added shortly.

If you have any questions, please contact Weiming An for QuickPIC and Ben Winjum for OSHUN.

PICKSC members present at AAC

August 31, 2016 by Benjamin Winjum

PICKSC members recently attended the 17th Advanced Accelerator Concepts (AAC) Workshop held at the National Harbor in Washington DC between July 31 and August 5. Copies of the presentations have not been posted. The PI of PICKSC received the AAC prize “for his leadership and pioneering contributions to the theory and particle-in-cell simulations of plasma based acceleration”. In addition, a PICKSC visiting student from IST in Portugal, Diana Amorim, received a best poster prize for her presentation, “Transverse evolution of positron beams accelerating in hollow plasma channel non-linear wakefields.”

3D OpenMP/MPI code benchmarks

January 11, 2016 by Benjamin Winjum

Viktor Decyk has developed fully 3D versions of skeleton PIC codes illustrating the hybrid parallel algorithmic techniques for utilizing both OpenMP and MPI. These skeleton codes have recently been benchmarked on the Edison machine at NERSC.

For the electromagnetic code on a problem size of 1024^3 grids with 27 particles/cell, one can see good scaling up to nearly 100,000 cores, nearly the entire Edison machine. There are 10 FFTs per time step, and the particle time gives about 2 psec/particle/time step at 98,304 cores.

Electrostatic, electromagnetic, and Darwin versions are available. These codes may be accessed here on the OpenMP/MPI skeleton code subpage or at our GitHub repository for skeleton codes.