TY - GEN
T1 - PARVMEC
T2 - 45th International Conference on Parallel Processing, ICPP 2016
AU - Seal, Sudip K.
AU - Hirshman, Steven P.
AU - Wingen, Andreas
AU - Wilcox, Robert S.
AU - Cianciosa, Mark R.
AU - Unterberg, Ezekial A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2016/9/21
Y1 - 2016/9/21
N2 - The ability to sustain magnetically confined plasma in a state of stable equilibrium is crucial for optimal and cost-effective operations of fusion devices like tokamaks and stellarators. The Variational Moments Equilibrium Code (VMEC) is the de-facto serial application used by fusion scientists to compute magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equilibria and study the physics of three dimensional plasmas in confined configurations. Modern fusion energy experiments have larger system scales with more interactive experimental workflows, both demanding faster analysis turnaround times on computational workloads that are stressing the capabilities of sequential VMEC. In this paper, we present PARVMEC, an efficient, parallel version of its sequential counterpart, capable of scaling to thousands of processors on distributed memory machines. PARVMEC is a non-linear code, with multiple numerical physics modules, each with its own computational complexity. A detailed speedup analysis supported by scaling results on 1,024 cores of a Cray XC30 supercomputer is presented. Depending on the mode of PARVMEC execution, speedup improvements of one to two orders of magnitude are reported. PARVMEC equips fusion scientists for the first time with a state-of-the-art capability for rapid, high fidelity analyses of magnetically confined plasmas at unprecedented scales.
AB - The ability to sustain magnetically confined plasma in a state of stable equilibrium is crucial for optimal and cost-effective operations of fusion devices like tokamaks and stellarators. The Variational Moments Equilibrium Code (VMEC) is the de-facto serial application used by fusion scientists to compute magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equilibria and study the physics of three dimensional plasmas in confined configurations. Modern fusion energy experiments have larger system scales with more interactive experimental workflows, both demanding faster analysis turnaround times on computational workloads that are stressing the capabilities of sequential VMEC. In this paper, we present PARVMEC, an efficient, parallel version of its sequential counterpart, capable of scaling to thousands of processors on distributed memory machines. PARVMEC is a non-linear code, with multiple numerical physics modules, each with its own computational complexity. A detailed speedup analysis supported by scaling results on 1,024 cores of a Cray XC30 supercomputer is presented. Depending on the mode of PARVMEC execution, speedup improvements of one to two orders of magnitude are reported. PARVMEC equips fusion scientists for the first time with a state-of-the-art capability for rapid, high fidelity analyses of magnetically confined plasmas at unprecedented scales.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84990943499&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICPP.2016.77
DO - 10.1109/ICPP.2016.77
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84990943499
T3 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing
SP - 618
EP - 627
BT - Proceedings - 45th International Conference on Parallel Processing, ICPP 2016
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Y2 - 16 August 2016 through 19 August 2016
ER -