Continuous-energy Monte Carlo neutron transport on GPUs in the Shift code

Journal Article · Thu Jan 17 00:00:00 EST 2019 · Annals of Nuclear Energy (Oxford)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2019.01.012· OSTI ID:1492181

Hamilton, Steven P.  ^[1]; Evans, Thomas M.  ^[1]

---

1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Here, a continuous-energy Monte Carlo neutron transport solver executing on GPUs has been developed within the Shift code. Several algorithmic approaches are considered, including both history-based and event-based implementations. Unlike in previous work involving multigroup Monte Carlo transport, it is demonstrated that event-based algorithms significantly outperform a history-based approach for continuous-energy transport as a result of increased device occupancy and reduced thread divergence. Numerical results are presented for detailed full-core models of a small modular reactor (SMR), including a model containing depleted fuel materials. These results demonstrate the substantial gains in performance that are possible with the latest-generation of GPUs. On the depleted SMR core configuration, an NVIDIA P100 GPU with 56 streaming multiprocessors provides performance equivalent to 90 CPU cores, and the latest V100 GPU with 80 multiprocessors offers the performance of more than 150 CPU cores.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1492181
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1547869
• Journal Information: Annals of Nuclear Energy (Oxford), Vol. 128, Issue C; ISSN 0306-4549
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
Radiation transport
Monte Carlo
GPU