Abstract of PICOPT Project

The aim of the project is to provide support to developers of gyrokinetic PIC (particle-in-cell) codes within EUROfusion to make efficient use of the new supercomputer Marconi-Fusion at CINECA. The main focus is on supplying optimized implementations of the algorithms to be used on the system consisting of Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing (KNL) processors. These tuned algorithms will also give a better performance on the Intel Skylake processor. One of the key issues is the optimal use of the vector processing and multithreading capabilities of modern CPUs. The ORB5 team has already adapted their code in this regard. Therefore, the HLST will use the ORB5 optimization as a basis in order to learn about potential techniques. If possible it is planned to further enhance the performance of the ORB5 code. Finally, the gained knowledge will be used to optimize the performance of the gyrokinetic EUTERPE code. Depending on the outcome of the project, the effort might be broadened to other gyrokinetic codes like GYSELA or ELMFIRE. In such a case a prolongation of the project is envisaged.