GEANT4 on Large Intel Xeon Phi Clusters: Service Implementation and Performance
Authors/Creators
- 1. National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Sofia, Bulgaria; Sofia University "St. Kl. Ohridski", Sofia, Bulgaria
Contributors
Other (3):
- 1. Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, BAS, Sofia, Bulgaria; National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Sofia, Bulgaria
- 2. National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Sofia, Bulgaria; Sofia University "St. Kl. Ohridski", Sofia, Bulgaria
Description
The fast and precise simulation of particle interactions with matter is an important task for several scientific areas, ranging from fundamental science (high-energy physics experiments, astrophysics and astroparticle physics, nuclear investigations) through applied science (radiation protection, space science), to biology and medicine (DNA investigations, hadron therapy, medical physics and medical imaging) and education. The basic software in all these fields is Geant4 (GEometry ANd Tracking) – a platform for simulation of the passage of particles through matter [1]. Along the way towards enabling the execution of Geant4 based simulations on HPC architectures with large clusters of Intel Xeon Phi co-processors as a general service, we study the performance of this software suit on the supercomputer system Avitohol@BAS, commenting on the pitfalls in the installation and compilation process. Some practical scripts are collected in the supplementary material shown in the appendix.