Massively parallel 3-dimensional particle-in-cell plasma code

Summary form only given. This paper describes ongoing research to apply Single Program Multiple Data, SPMD, domain decomposition techniques to the three-dimensional simulation of plasma phenomena using a particle-in-cell (PIC) code. In this work, techniques are presented which perform static allocation of particle computation to the set of processing elements based upon each particle´s initial position within the simulation´s physical geometric domain. Dynamic load balancing strategies are then applied as necessary to maintain the desired level of efficiency. A major focus has been to develop augmented techniques which are scaleable and can be easily applied across a wide range of parallel and distributed computing environments. The effectiveness of the techniques are evaluated empirically by applying them to a study on nonlinear evolution of lower hybrid waves. This was done using multiple interprocessor communication paradigms on a 256 node Gray T-3D massively parallel processor.