Improved cache performance in Monte Carlo transport calculations using energy banding
Author(s)
Siegel, A.; Felker, K.; Forget, B.; Beckman, P.; Smith, Karen E; Romano, Paul Kollath; ... Show more Show less
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We present an energy banding algorithm for Monte Carlo (MC) neutral particle transport simulations which depend on large cross section lookup tables. In MC codes, read-only cross section data tables are accessed frequently, exhibit poor locality, and are typically too much large to fit in fast memory. Thus, performance is often limited by long latencies to RAM, or by off-node communication latencies when the data footprint is very large and must be decomposed on a distributed memory machine. The proposed energy banding algorithm allows maximal temporal reuse of data in band sizes that can flexibly accommodate different architectural features. The energy banding algorithm is general and has a number of benefits compared to the traditional approach. In the present analysis we explore its potential to achieve improvements in time-to-solution on modern cache-based architectures.
Date issued
2013-10Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and EngineeringJournal
Computer Physics Communications
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Siegel, A., et al. “Improved Cache Performance in Monte Carlo Transport Calculations Using Energy Banding.” Computer Physics Communications, vol. 185, no. 4, Apr. 2014, pp. 1195–99.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
0010-4655