Parallel performance results for the OpenMOC neutron transport code on multicore platforms
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Forget_Parallel performance.pdf
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Author(s)
Siegel, A.
He, S.
Boyd III, William Robert Dawson
Forget, Benoit Robert Yves
Smith, Kord S.
Date Issued
February 2016
Journal
International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications
Publisher
Sage Publications
Citation
Boyd, W. et al. “Parallel Performance Results for the OpenMOC Neutron Transport Code on Multicore Platforms.” International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications 30.3 (2016): 360–375.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The shift toward multicore architectures has ushered in a new era of shared memory parallelism for scientific applications. This transition has introduced challenges for the nuclear engineering community, as it seeks to design high-fidelity full-core reactor physics simulation tools. This article describes the parallel transport sweep algorithm in the OpenMOC method of characteristics (MOC) neutron transport code for multicore platforms using OpenMP. Strong and weak scaling studies are performed for both Intel Xeon and IBM Blue Gene/Q (BG/Q) multicore processors. The results demonstrate 100% parallel efficiency for 12 threads on 12 cores on Intel Xeon platforms and over 90% parallel efficiency with 64 threads on 16 cores on the IBM BG/Q. These results illustrate the potential for hardware acceleration for MOC neutron transport on modern multicore and future many-core architectures. In addition, this work highlights the pitfalls of programming for multicore architectures, with a focal point on false sharing.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/1094342016630388
