Massively parallel simulations of relativistic fluid dynamics on graphics processing units with CUDA

TL;DR

This paper introduces a GPU-accelerated implementation of a relativistic fluid dynamics simulation algorithm, significantly speeding up computations for modeling quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It presents the first CUDA-based GPU implementation of the 3+1d relativistic viscous hydrodynamics equations with validation and substantial performance improvements.

Findings

GPU code is ~100 times faster than serial implementation

Validated with relativistic shock-tube and Gubser flow tests

Enables more efficient simulations of quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

Relativistic fluid dynamics is a major component in dynamical simulations of the quark-gluon plasma created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Simulations of the full three-dimensional dissipative dynamics of the quark-gluon plasma with fluctuating initial conditions are computationally expensive and typically require some degree of parallelization. In this paper, we present a GPU implementation of the Kurganov-Tadmor algorithm which solves the 3+1d relativistic viscous hydrodynamics equations including the effects of both bulk and shear viscosities. We demonstrate that the resulting CUDA-based GPU code is approximately two orders of magnitude faster than the corresponding serial implementation of the Kurganov-Tadmor algorithm. We validate the code using (semi-)analytic tests such as the relativistic shock-tube and Gubser flow.