EMMA: an AMR cosmological simulation code with radiative transfer

TL;DR

EMMA is a versatile cosmological simulation code that models reionization by integrating collisionless dynamics, gas physics, and radiative transfer with adaptive resolution and GPU acceleration.

Contribution

It introduces a new approximation for radiative transfer, combines multiple physical processes on adaptive meshes, and demonstrates significant GPU acceleration capabilities.

Findings

Successfully passes standard validation tests

Achieves up to 16.9x GPU acceleration

Handles coupled physics across multiple scales

Abstract

EMMA is a cosmological simulation code aimed at investigating the reionization epoch. It handles simultaneously collisionless and gas dynamics, as well as radiative transfer physics using a moment-based description with the M1 approximation. Field quantities are stored and computed on an adaptive 3D mesh and the spatial resolution can be dynamically modified based on physically-motivated criteria. Physical processes can be coupled at all spatial and temporal scales. We also introduce a new and optional approximation to handle radiation : the light is transported at the resolution of the non-refined grid and only once the dynamics have been fully updated, whereas thermo-chemical processes are still tracked on the refined elements. Such an approximation reduces the overheads induced by the treatment of radiation physics. A suite of standard tests are presented and passed by EMMA, providing a validation for its future use in studies of the reionization epoch. The code is parallel and is able to use graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate hydrodynamics and radiative transfer calculations. Depending on the optimizations and the compilers used to generate the CPU reference, global GPU acceleration factors between x3.9 and x16.9 can be obtained. Vectorization and transfer operations currently prevent better GPU performances and we expect that future optimizations and hardware evolution will lead to greater accelerations.