Acceleration of PIC simulation with GPU

Abstract

Particle-in-cell (PIC) is a simulation technique for plasma physics. The large number of particles in highresolution plasma simulation increases the volume computation required, making it vital to increase computation speed. In this study, we attempt to accelerate computation speed on graphics processing units (GPUs) using KEMPO, a PIC simulation code package [H. Matsumoto and Y. Omura, Computer Space Plasma Physics, pp.21-65 (1985)]. We perform two tests for benchmarking, with small and large grid sizes. In these tests, we run KEMPO1 code using a CPU only, both a CPU and a GPU, and a GPU only. The results showed that performance using only a GPU was twice that of using a CPU alone. While, execution time for using both a CPU and GPU is comparable to the tests with a CPU alone, because of the significant bottleneck in communication between the CPU and GPU. © 2011 The Japan Society of Plasma Science and Nuclear Fusion Research.