Massively parallel 3-dimensional particle-in-cell plasma code
E.E. Wells, Saleh H. Al-Sharaeh, Nutan Singh · 1997
Summary form only given. This paper describes ongoing research to apply Single Program Multiple Data, SPMD, domain decomposition techniques to the three-dimensional simulation of plasma phenomena using a particle-in-cell (PIC) code. In this work, techniques are presented which perform static allocation of particle computation to the set of processing elements based upon each particle's initial position within the simulation's physical geometric domain. Dynamic load balancing strategies are then applied as necessary to maintain the desired level of efficiency. A major focus has been to develop augmented techniques which are scaleable and can be easily applied across a wide range of parallel and distributed computing environments. The effectiveness of the techniques are evaluated empirically by applying them to a study on nonlinear evolution of lower hybrid waves. This was done using multiple interprocessor communication paradigms on a 256 node Gray T-3D massively parallel processor.