Prototype of particle transport using GPU vendor libraries

R&D task number: G4RD10

Prototype of gamma or electron transport using GPU vendor library

Computations by leveraging hardware features and using the long experience of the vendors in this type of application. Several approaches and libraries are available for this, including vendor specific ones like Nvidia Optix and cross-platform ones such as Vulkan. We will evaluate how one (or more) can be adapted for transport of key particle species for detector simulation.

Create a proof of concept simulation of one particle species (gammas or electrons) using a GPU-vendor library such as Nvidia Optix for the full transport of these particles.

  • Examine the existing Opticks simulation of optical photons, to identify similarities and differences with operations needed for interactions of gamma and/or electrons;
  • Map interactions into shader operations of NVidia Optix, in order to do the full transport of gammas on GPU;
  • Create a prototype implementation of transport of at least one particle species (gammas and/or electrons) leveraging a vendor library, likely Optix.

Lead and main developers: Guilherme Amadio, John Apostolakis, Andrei Gheata

Effort estimate

Pointers to information