Dynamic load balancing in a concurrent plasma PIC code on the JPL/Caltech Mark III hypercube

Conference · Mon Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1990

OSTI ID:10115367

Liewer, P C; Leaver, E W ^[1]; Decyk, V K; Dawson, J M ^[2]

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1. Jet Propulsion Lab., Pasadena, CA (United States)
2. California Univ., Los Angeles, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics

Dynamic load balancing has been implemented in a concurrent one-dimensional electromagnetic plasma particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation code using a method which adds very little overhead to the parallel code. In PIC codes, the orbits of many interacting plasma electrons and ions are followed as an initial value problem as the particles move in electromagnetic fields calculated self-consistently from the particle motions. The code was implemented using the GCPIC algorithm in which the particles are divided among processors by partitioning the spatial domain of the simulation. The problem is load-balanced by partitioning the spatial domain so that each partition has approximately the same number of particles. During the simulation, the partitions are dynamically recreated as the spatial distribution of the particles changes in order to maintain processor load balance.

• Research Organization: Jet Propulsion Lab., Pasadena, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: FG03-84ER53173
• OSTI ID: 10115367
• Report Number(s): CONF-9004159--9; ON: DE95005528; BR: 35AT05000/AT0520210
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700330
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200
ALGORITHMS
DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
EQUATIONS OF MOTION
HYPERCUBE COMPUTERS
MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTERS
PARALLEL PROCESSING
PLASMA KINETICS, TRANSPORT, AND IMPURITIES
PLASMA SIMULATION