New Parallel computing framework for radiation transport codes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile parallel computing framework for radiation transport codes, enhancing efficiency, load balancing, and restart capabilities, and demonstrating integration with MARS15 and ongoing deployment with PHITS.

Contribution

The paper presents a new, code-independent parallel framework with checkpointing and load balancing improvements for radiation transport simulations.

Findings

Successfully integrated with MARS15 code

Improves load balancing and scheduling

Supports checkpoint merging and restarting

Abstract

A new parallel computing framework has been developed to use with general-purpose radiation transport codes. The framework was implemented as a C++ module that uses MPI for message passing. The module is significantly independent of radiation transport codes it can be used with, and is connected to the codes by means of a number of interface functions. The frame work was integrated with the MARS15 code, and an effort is under way to deploy it in PHITS. Besides the parallel computing functionality, the framework offers a checkpoint facility that allows restarting calculations with a saved checkpoint file. The checkpoint facility can be used in single process calculations as well as in the parallel regime. Several checkpoint files can be merged into one thus combining results of several calculations. The framework also corrects some of the known problems with the sch eduling and load balancing found in the original implementations of the parallel computing functionality in MARS15 and PHITS. The framework can be used efficiently on homogeneous systems and networks of workstations, where the interference from the other users is possible.