A New OpenModelica Compiler High Performance Frontend

Abstract

The equation-based object-oriented Modelica language allows easy composition of models from components. It is very easy to create very large parametrized models using component arrays of models. Current open-source and commercial Modelica tools can with ease handle models with a hundred thousand equations and a thousand states. However, when the system size goes above half a million (or more) equations the tools begin to have problems with scalability. This paper presents the new frontend of the OpenModelica compiler, designed with scalability in mind. The new OpenModelica frontend can handle much larger systems than the current one with better time and memory performance. The new frontend was validated against large models from the ScalableTestSuite library and Modelica Standard Library, with good results.

OpenModelica.jl: A modular and extensible Modelica compiler framework in Julia targeting ModelingToolkit.jl

“…In this paper, we expand this work to implement a full Modelica compiler using Julia with the goal to improve and optimize existing models, and by adhering to the standards of the Modelica language, we hope to facilitate the reuse of modeling know-how contained in existing Modelica libraries. Updates to this first iteration of this compiler include automatic translation of the highperformance frontend (Pop et al 2019) along with experimental support for hybrid systems and a new backend targeting ModelingToolkit. We have used this framework to simulate Modelica models of systems containing thousands of equations and variables to assess the performance of our compiler.…”

“…To flatten the Modelica code, we use the OMFrontend.jl, which was automatically generated from the highperformance frontend of the OMC (Pop et al 2019). Previously, we used the old frontend (Tinnerholm et al 2020); however, as part of the work presented here, the MetaModelica-Julia translator introduced by Tinnerholm et al ( 2020) was used to automatically generate a Julia implementation of the high-performance frontend (Pop et al ).…”

Connected Components in Undirected Set--Based Graphs. Applications in Object--Oriented Model Manipulation

“…In consequence, in presence of large arrays, the computational cost of the compilation and the length of the produced code can become huge and the tools are unable to simulate systems with more that about 10 5 state variables. While there are some experimental implementations that avoid expanding and unrolling [7,19], there is not yet a general solution.…”

Chemical Process Simulation Using OpenModelica

“…There are also efforts to make it suitable for handling large systems upward of 750 000 equations. 12 The objective of the current work is to include models of unit operations in OpenModelica and make it useful for process simulation. Property data and thermodynamic correlations have already been ported to OpenModelica by the authors.…”

“…OpenModelica comes with 75 libraries in diverse fields, such as hydraulics, power-system simulation, motorcycle dynamics, servomechanisms, and thermal power, with about 1000 models. There are also efforts to make it suitable for handling large systems upward of 750 000 equations …”