Thesis: Pic-Vert: A Particle-in-Cell Implementation for Multi-Core Architectures

PhD defense: Yann BARSAMIAN

Title: Pic-Vert: A Particle-in-Cell Implementation for Multi-Core Architectures

Team: ICPS

Abstract: In this thesis, we are interested in solving the Vlasov-Poisson system of equations (useful in the domain of plasma physics, for example within the ITER project), thanks to classical Particle-in-Cell (PIC) and semi-Lagrangian methods. The main contribution of our thesis is an efficient implementation of the PIC method on multi-core architectures, written in C, called Pic-Vert. Our implementation
(a) achieves close-to-minimal number of memory transfers with the main memory,
(b) exploits SIMD instructions for numerical computations, and
(c) exhibits a high degree of shared memory parallelism.
To put our work in perspective with respect to the state-of-the-art, we propose a metric to compare the efficiency of different PIC implementations when using different multi-core architectures. Our implementation is 3 times faster than other recent implementation on the same architecture (Intel Haswell).

The jury is composed of:
VIOLARD Éric (associate professor, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France) - thesis director
JEANNOT Emmanuel (senior researcher, INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, Bordeaux, France) - reviewer
SONNENDRÜCKER Eric (full professor, Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Garching, Allemagne) - reviewer
COTTET Georges-Henri (full professor, University of Grenoble, Grenoble, France) - examiner
HIRSTOAGA Sever (researcher, INRIA Nancy Grand-Est, Strasbourg, France) - examiner
MEHRENBERGER Michel (associate professor, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France) - examiner

The defense will be held in French and will take place on Wednesday October 31st, 2018, at 2:00 pm in the amphitheater A301 of the Pole API building in Illkirch (300 boulevard Sebastien Brant).