The 3D, electromagnetic, particle-in-cell code, QUICKSILVER
Charged-particle simulations in three dimensions are now performed routinely in the Pulsed Power Sciences Directorate at Sandia with the QUICKSILVER suite of codes. QUICKSILVER is a multitasked, finite-difference, three-dimensional, fully relativistic, electromagnetic, particle-in-cell code developed at Sandia. It is targeted for use on current and near-term supercomputers, such as the Cray Y-MP/864 or the Cray X-MP/416, which are characterized by large, shared central memories and multiple processors. QUICKSILVER has already been used to simulate ion diodes, magnetically insulated transmission lines, microwave devices, and electron beam propagation. Before describing the suite in detail, it is worthwhile to highlight some salient architectural features of the QUICKSILVER simulation code. All grid-related quantities (electromagnetic fields and current density, for example) are stored in central memory and particle information may be stored out of memory if there is not sufficient central memory. In order to minimize the use of central memory, large conductor volumes in which fields are always zero must not be stored. This necessitates constructing the simulation region from blocks'' logically connected along arbitrary planes. The overhead required to accomplish this block connection in the field-solving routines uses a very small percentage of the total processing time. After the grid-related arrays have been allocated in memory, additional central memory is used to cache particle information. When this cache is full, it is necessary to shuffle particle information in and out of the memory cache and onto disk or other out-of-memory storage. 8 refs.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/DP
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 6726353
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-90-1466C; CONF-9009102--1; ON: DE90016221
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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