WarpIV: In Situ Visualization and Analysis of Ion Accelerator Simulations

Abstract

The generation of short pulses of ion beams through the interaction of an intense laser with a plasma sheath offers the possibility of compact and cheaper ion sources for many applications; from fast ignition and radiography of dense targets to hadron therapy and injection into conventional accelerators. To enable the efficient analysis of large-scale, high-fidelity particle accelerator simulations using the Warp simulation suite, we introduce the Warp In situ Visualization Toolkit (WarpIV). WarpIV integrates state-of-the-art in situ visualization and analysis using VisIt with Warp, supports management and control of complex in situ visualization and analysis workflows, and implements integrated analytics to facilitate query and feature-based data analytics and efficient large-scale data analysis. WarpIV enables for the first time distributed parallel, in situ visualization of the full simulation data using highperformance compute resources as the data is being generated by Warp. We describe the application of WarpIV to study and compare large 2D and 3D ion accelerator simulations, demonstrating significant differences in the acceleration process in 2D and 3D simulations. WarpIV is available to the public via https://bitbucket.org/berkeleylab/warpiv . IEEE CG&A, SPECIAL ISSUE ON HIGH PERFORMANCE VISUALIZATION AND ANALYSIS, SEPTEMBER 2015 1In situ Visualization and Analysis of Ion Accelerator Simulations using Warp and VisIt Oliver Rübel*, Burlen Loring*, Jean-Luc Vay, David P. Grote, Remi Lehe, Stepan Bulanov, Henri Vincenti, and E .Wes Bethel Abstract-The generation of short pulses of ion beams through the interaction of an intense laser with a plasma sheath offers the possibility of compact and cheaper ion sources for many applications; from fast ignition and radiography of dense targets to hadron therapy and injection into conventional accelerators. To enable the efficient analysis of large-scale, high-fidelity particle accelerator simulations using the Warp simulation suite, we introduce the Warp In situ Visualization Toolkit (WarpIV). WarpIV integrates state-of-the-art in situ visualization and analysis using VisIt with Warp, supports management and control of complex in situ visualization and analysis workflows, and implements integrated analytics to facilitate query and feature-based data analytics and efficient large-scale data analysis.

Python-based in situ analysis and visualization

“…In both, the control and configuration Python scripts can be automatically generated by recording a series of actions in the GUI. Libsim's Python features have been successfully used to control and configure large scale in situ analysis [12]. With its server side embedded interpreter and Python programmable filter, Catalyst has the capability to run user provided Python code that is written to map to VTK's pipeline abstraction so as to have direct access to the simulation data [11].…”

In Situ Methods, Infrastructures, and Applications on High Performance Computing Platforms

“…In a related vein, computational scientists may be forced to run their codes at reduced spatial resolution due to the large cost associated with performing full spatial resolution I/O. Rübel et al, 2016, [RLV*16], customize production in situ methods and infrastructure for guiding in situ domain‐science focused query‐ and feature‐based analytics to facilitate deeper understanding of phenomena in an ion accelerator simulation. This approach enables computational scientists to overcome the high cost of I/O and run their codes at higher model resolution than would otherwise be possible.…”

“…Their method takes advantage of space‐time coherence of time‐dependent simulation data to obtain in situ data reduction. Rübel et al, 2016 [RLV*16] compute and save histograms, statistics, and multivariate joint distribution functions from both 2D and 3D simulations to enable intermodel comparison and rapid post hoc exploration. Finally, Li et al, 2015 [LGP*15] considered the efficacy of wavelet compression, which prioritizes based on wavelet coefficients, with an eye toward in situ .…”

Security in high-performance computing environments

“…33 This additional analysis or visualization might happen serially, following the completed execution on the HPC system, or, alternatively, may happen in an interactive, tightly-coupled fashion such that the user visualizing the output of the computation can manipulate the computation as it is taking place. 37,45 It should be noted that the "coupled" computation/analysis model could involve network connections external to the HPC facility, or, and particularly as envisioned by the "superfacility" model for data-intensive science, 50 may involve highly specialized and optimized network connections within a single HPC center. Examples of all three workflows are shown in Figure 1.…”