Successful vectorization - reactor physics Monte Carlo code (original) (raw)
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Monte Carlo methods for radiation transport analysis on vector computers
Progress in Nuclear Energy, 1984
The development of advanced computers with special capabilities for vectorized or parallel calculations demands the development of new calculational methods. The very nature of the Monte Carlo process precludes direct conversion of old (scalar) codes to the new machines. Instead, major changes in global algorithms and careful selection of compatible physics treatments are required. Recent results for Monte Carlo in multigroup shielding applications and in continuous-energy reactor lattice analysis have demonstrated that Monte Carlo methods can be successfully vectorized. The significant effort required for stylized coding and major algorithmic changes is worthwhile, and significant gains in computational efficiency are realized. Speedups of at least twenty to forty times faster than CDC-7600 scalar calculations have been achieved on the CYBER-205 without sacrificing the accuracy of standard Monte Carlo methods. Speedups of this magnitude provide reductions in statistical uncertainties for a given amount of computing time, permit more detailed and realistic problems to be analyzed, and make the Monte Carlo method more accessible to nuclear analysts. Following overviews of the Monte Carlo method for particle transport analysis and of vector computer hardware and software characteristics, both general and specific aspects of the vectorization of Monte Carlo are discussed. Finally, numerical results obtained from vectorized Monte Carlo codes run on the CYBER-205 are presented.
Status of Vectorized Monte Carlo for Particle Transport Analysis
The International Journal of Supercomputing Applications, 1987
The conventional particle transport Monte Carlo algorithm is ill suited for modem vector supercomputers because the random nature of the particle transport process in the history based algorithm in hibits construction of vectors. An alterna tive, event-based algorithm is suitable for vectorization and has been used recently to achieve impressive gains in perfor mance on vector supercomputers. This re view describes the event-based algorithm and several variations of it Implementa tions of this algorithm for applications in particle transport are described, and their relative merits are discussed. The imple mentation of Monte Carlo methods on multiple vector parallel processors is con sidered, as is the potential of massively parallel processors for Monte Carlo par ticle transport simulations.
Progress in nuclear science and technology, 2011
Large scale neutronics calculations for radiation safety and machine reliability are required to support design activities for the ITER fusion reactor which is currently in phase of construction. Its large size and complexity of diagnostics, control and heating systems and ports, and also channel penetrations inside the thick blanket shielding surrounding the 14 MeV D-T neutron source are essential challenges for neutronics calculations. In the ITER tokamak geometry, the Monte Carlo (MC) method is the preferred one for radiation transport calculations. Due to the independence of particle histories, their tracks can be processed in parallel. Parallel computations on high performance cluster computers substantially increase number of sampled particles and therefore allow reaching the desired statistical precision of the MC results using the MCNP5 code. The MCNP5 parallel performance was assessed on the HPC-FF supercomputer. Use of CAD-based approach with high spatial resolution improves systematic adequacy of the MC geometry modeling. These achievements are demonstrated on radiation transport calculations for designing the Blanket Shield Module and Auxiliary Shield of the ITER Electron Cyclotron Heating (ECH) upper launcher. The spatial distributions of nuclear heating were analysed by using the graphical representation of the MCNP5 mesh-tally results in 2D and 3D plots.
Overview of Monte Carlo radiation transport codes
Radiation Measurements, 2010
The Radiation Safety Information Computational Center (RSICC) is the designated central repository of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for nuclear software in radiation transport, safety, and shielding. Since the center was established in the early 60's, there have been several Monte Carlo (MC) particle transport computer codes contributed by scientists from various countries. An overview of the neutron transport computer codes in the RSICC collection is presented.
Adaptation of a Monte Carlo radiation transport code to supercomputers
1986
Hussein and U.G Gujar, for their valuable help and guidance throughout this project work. I am grateful to the School of Computer Science for awarding me the Graduate Teaching Ass i sta ηtsh i ρ, and to Dr. V.C Bhavsar for partially supporting me during the months of September to December 1985, through his National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant (No. A0089). Free CPU-time was provided by the Supercomputing Services of the Univers ity of Calgary on the Cyber-205 computer. I wish to acknowledge the Supercomputing Services personnel, in particular Mr. Rod J. Wittig, Mr. Doug J. Baker, Ms.
1970
The theory used in FASTER-III, a Monte Carlo computer program for the transport of neutrons and gamma rays in complex geometries, is outlined. The program includes the treatment of geometric regions bounded by quadratic and quadric surfaces with multiple radiation sources which have specified space, angle, and energy dependence. The program calculates, using importance sampling, the resulting number and energy fluxes at specified point, surface, and volume detectors. It can also calculate minimum weight shield configuration meeting a specified dose rate constraint. Results are presented for sample problems involving primary neutron, and primary and secondary photon, transport in a spherical reactor shield configuration.
OpenMC: A state-of-the-art Monte Carlo code for research and development
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 2015
This paper gives an overview of OpenMC, an open source Monte Carlo particle transport code recently developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OpenMC uses continuous-energy cross sections and a constructive solid geometry representation, enabling high-fidelity modeling of nuclear reactors and other systems. Modern, portable input/output file formats are used in OpenMC: XML for input, and HDF5 for output. High performance parallel algorithms in OpenMC have demonstrated near-linear scaling to over 100,000 processors on modern supercomputers. Other topics discussed in this paper include plotting, CMFD acceleration, variance reduction, eigenvalue calculations, and software development processes.
Multi-core performance studies of a Monte Carlo neutron transport code
The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 2013
Performance results are presented for a multi-threaded version of the OpenMC Monte Carlo neutronics code using OpenMP in the context of nuclear reactor criticality calculations. Our main interest is production computing, and thus we limit our approach to threading strategies that both require reasonable levels of development effort and preserve the code features necessary for robust application to real-world reactor problems. Several approaches are developed and the results compared on several multi-core platforms using a popular reactor physics benchmark. A broad range of performance studies are distilled into a simple, consistent picture of the empirical performance characteristics of reactor Monte Carlo algorithms on current multi-core architectures.
Development of General-Purpose Particle and Heavy Ion Transport Monte Carlo Code
Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 2002
The high-energy particle transport code NMTC/JAM, which has been developed at JAERI, was improved for the high-energy heavy ion transport calculation by incorporating the JQMD code, the SPAR code and the Shen formula. The new NMTC/JAM named PHITS (Particle and Heavy-Ion Transport code System) is the first general-purpose heavy ion transport Monte Carlo code over the incident energies from several MeV/nucleon to several GeV/nucleon.
Parallelization of a Monte Carlo particle transport simulation code
Computer Physics Communications, 2010
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