Plasma-PEPSC

Plasmas constitute paradigmatic examples of complex physical systems, involving nonlinear, multiscale processes far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Like for the petascale, lighthouse plasma simulation codes will be among the very first to break the exaflop barrier. Plasma-PEPSC aims at enabling four lighthouse plasma simulation codes (BIT, GENE, PIConGPU, Vlasiator) from different plasma physics domains (plasma-material interfaces, fusion, accelerator physics, space physics) and important scientific drivers to exploit exascale supercomputers. To achieve these ambitious scientific goals, we want to maximize the performance achievable by our four codes and enable them on the current pre-exascale and upcoming exascale supercomputers by algorithmic improvements (automatic load- balancing, compression, and resilience), performance optimisation for highly heterogeneous systems (accelerators and heterogeneous memories) and high-throughput online data analysis. Together with enabling the tackling of scientific grand challenges on exascale supercomputers, Plasma-PEPSC co-designs the four plasma simulation codes with the systems developed within EPI by providing feedback to the design of European processors, accelerators, and pilots and investigating the plasma simulation code changes to exploit these systems with maximum efficiency. Plasma-PEPSC aims at providing efficient computational tools helping address several Grand Challenges in plasma physics, employing high-fidelity descriptions based on kinetic models: optimizing magnetic confinement fusion devices, developing new accelerator technologies, and predicting space weather. In this context, we focus our efforts on four European flagship plasma simulation codes with a large user base, bringing together a complementary and interdisciplinary team of world-leading domain scientists from plasma physics, applied mathematics, and computer science (including HPC, computational science, software engineering, and data analytics)