Sp 04 CS267 Final Project: Parallelization of oopd1

oopd1 is a new object-oriented particle in cell (particle-mesh) code for modeling plasma kinetics being written by the Plasma Theory and Simulation Group (PTSG). oopd1 is an acronym for Object-Oriented Plasma Device 1-Dimension, and is a more unified and extensible replacement for the previous PTSG suite of C 1d particle in cell (PIC) codes – xpdp1, xpdc1, xpds1 – each written for a separate coordinate system (planar, cylindrical, and spherical, respectively). 1d-3v PIC codes, such as oopd1, model systems with one spatial dimension and three velocity components. Since computational work scales linearly with dimension in 1d (instead of quadratically in 2d or cubicly in 3d), one dimensional PIC codes are used to simulate systems that can be approximated with such a model, as 1d results are obtained an order of magnitude faster than 2d results for similar systems.. 1d PIC has been used to model vacuum electronics, space plasmas, laser-plasma interactions, plasma etch reactors and numerous other examples. The hierarchy of classes in oopd1, both implemented and planned, is shown in Figure 1. The purpose of this project is to write a parallel 1d-1v parallel PIC algorithm using C++ and MPI in order to assess the computational issues with including this model in oopd1. This simplified code, named simpic, will be used to assess the time used in communication, the field solve, and the particle push for several problem sizes in order to diagnose and improve PIC computational performance for serial and parallel versions. With this information, oopd1will be later parallelized using MPI including more general parallelization beyond the scope of this CS267 project (initialization, load balancing, arbitrary boundary conditions, multiple field solves, etc.).