The Plasma Simulation Code: A modern particle-in-cell code with patch-based load-balancing

This work describes the Plasma Simulation Code (psc), an explicit, electromagnetic particle-in-cell code with support for different order particle shape functions. We review the basic components of the particle-in-cell method as well as the computational architecture of the psc code that allows supp...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of computational physics 2016-08, Vol.318 (C), p.305-326
Main Authors: Germaschewski, Kai, Fox, William, Abbott, Stephen, Ahmadi, Narges, Maynard, Kristofor, Wang, Liang, Ruhl, Hartmut, Bhattacharjee, Amitava
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This work describes the Plasma Simulation Code (psc), an explicit, electromagnetic particle-in-cell code with support for different order particle shape functions. We review the basic components of the particle-in-cell method as well as the computational architecture of the psc code that allows support for modular algorithms and data structure in the code. We then describe and analyze in detail a distinguishing feature of psc: patch-based load balancing using space-filling curves which is shown to lead to major efficiency gains over unbalanced methods and a previously used simpler balancing method.
ISSN:0021-9991
1090-2716
DOI:10.1016/j.jcp.2016.05.013