Parallel direct simulation Monte Carlo computation using CUDA on GPUs

Abstract

In this study computations of the two-dimensional Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method using Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are presented. An all-device (GPU) computational approach is adopted-where the entire computation is performed on the GPU device, leaving the CPU idle-which includes particle moving, indexing, collisions between particles and state sampling. The subsequent application to GPU computation requires various changes to the original DSMC method to ensure efficient performance on the GPU device. Communications between the host (CPU) and device (GPU) occur only during problem initialization and simulation conclusion when results are only copied from the device to the host. Several multi-dimensional benchmark tests are employed to demonstrate the correctness of the DSMC implementation. We demonstrate here the application of DSMC using a single-GPU, with speedups of 3∼10 times as compared to a high-end Intel CPU (Intel Xeon X5472) depending upon the size and the level of rarefaction encountered in the simulation. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.