Grid-based Parallel Data Streaming Implemented for the Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code
Authors: S. Klasky, S. Ethier, Z. Lin, K. Martins, D. McCune, and R. Samtaney
Date of PPPL Report: September 2003
To be presented at: the SC2003 Igniting Innovation Conference, 15-21 November 2003, Phoenix, Arizona
We have developed a threaded parallel data streaming approach using Globus to transfer multi-terabyte simulation data from a remote supercomputer to the scientist's home analysis/visualization cluster, as the simulation executes, with negligible overhead. Data transfer experiments show that this concurrent data transfer approach is more favorable compared with writing to local disk and then transferring this data to be post-processed. The present approach is conducive to using the grid to pipeline the simulation with post-processing and visualization. We have applied this method to the Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC), a 3-dimensional particle-in-cell code used to study microturbulence in magnetic confinement fusion from first principles plasma theory.