Achieving high performance

As Pelegant uses parallel SDDS library for parallel I/O operations, it is suggested to use a parallel file system to achieve best performance. Pelegant has been tested on several parallel file systems, such as GPFS, PVFS, Lustre, etc.. The NFS file system is compatible with parallel I/O if configured properly, but the speed for I/O operations is not scalable.

In our master/slave model, the master is responsible for tracking in the Uniprocessor elements. To run simulations efficiently, we also suggest when possible that the user arrange all serial elements in a continuous sequence, which will minimize the communication overhead for gathering and scattering particles. This become less necessary for the latest Pelegant, as most elements have been parallelized.

For ANL users (or others who have an ALCF account), we can provide help to perform runs on the Fusion cluster (2,560 Intel CPU-cores, each with a 2.67 GHz Xeon) or Intrepid supercomputer (163,840 cores, PowerPC 450, 850 MHz) at ANL. Pelegant is pre-built and available on both systems.