Portability frameworks for accelerator-based particle transport

R&D task number: G4RD11

Evaluation of performance portability frameworks

Evaluate and gradually converge to a sustainable recipe for ‘performance portability’ allowing to run efficiently simulation code on accelerators. Evaluate the leading ‘performance portability’ frameworks (Kokkos, Alpaka or SYCL/oneApi) for use in detector simulation by porting a small code base with medium complexity to use it. The strategy cannot ignore redesigning and re-implementing first a subset of simulation components in accelerator-aware form before being able to apply such portability recipes.

The kernel preferably should include a challenge in the form of code that involves divergent paths of execution. The prototypes developed in the context of G4RD09 are good candidates for the test code used for this evaluation. The activity can start from early versions of these prototypes, running on both CPU and GPU.

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

Estimated effort

3-4 months after having a working version of simulation kernel examples on GPU

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