BS-SOLCTRA: Towards a Parallel Magnetic Plasma Confinement Simulation Framework for Modular Stellarator Devices

Abstract

Hand in hand, computer simulations and High Performance Computing are catalyzing advances in experimental and theoretical fusion physics and the design and construction of new confinement devices that are spearheading the quest for alternative energy sources. This paper presents the Biot-Savart Solver for Computing and Tracing Magnetic Field Lines (BS-SOLCTRA), a field line tracing code developed during the first Stellarator of Costa Rica (SCR-1) campaign. We present the process towards turning BS-SOLCTRA into a full parallel simulation framework for stellarator devices. Message passing, shared-memory programming, and vectorization form the underlying parallel infrastructure and provide scalable execution. The implemented parallel simulator led to a 1, 550X speedup when compared to the original sequential version. We also present the new powerful scientific visualization capabilities added to the BS-SOLCTRA framework.