A software framework for the portable parallelization of particle-mesh simulations

Sbalzarini, I.F. [ETH Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland] Walther, J. H. [ETH Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland] Polasek, B. [ETH Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland] Chatelain, Philippe [UCL] Bergdorf, M. [ETH Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland] Hieber, S.E. [ETH Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland] Kotsalis, E.M. [ETH Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland] Koumoutsakos, Petros [ETH Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland] et al.[show all]

We present a software framework for the transparent and portable parallelization of simulations using particle-mesh methods. Particles are used to transport physical properties and a mesh is required in order to reinitialize the distorted particle locations, ensuring the convergence of the method. Field quantities are computed on the particles using fast multipole methods or by discretizing and solving the governing equations on the mesh. This combination of meshes and particles presents a challenging set of parallelization issues. The present library addresses these issues for a wide range of applications, and it enables orders of magnitude increase in the number of computational elements employed in particle methods. We demonstrate the performance and scalability of the library on several problems, including the first-ever billion particle simulation of diffusion in real biological cell geometries.