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Codes for MHD Simulation

© Adam Hughes

Last week, we took a first look at magnetohydrodynamics, or MHD, and briefly touched on a few of the applications for which MHD simulation might be employed. This time around, we're going to look at some of the MHD simulation codes available to researchers before we jump in and look at the problems being approached with MHD in by today's computational scientists.

A good place to go to start learning about MHD codes (or acquiring a copy for use, if you're so inclined) is the Zeus homepage at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Urbana-Champaign, IL. "Zeus" is the name of a suite of MHD codes developed at NCSA/UIUC, and a glance through the specifications reveals many of the characteristics one might expect a modern simulation package to have.

The researchers at NCSA have developed four specific simulation codes, Zeus-2D, Zeus-3D, Zeus-MP, and Titan. Zeus-2D is used to solve the equations of hydrodynamics in two dimensions, while both Zeus-3D and Zeus-MP do the same thing in three dimensions. Titan was designed to be a general-purpose program for hydrodynamics studies.

It's interesting to note that, beyond the specificity of the physics involved in these codes, their descriptions look quite similar to those of programs designed for use in the other physical sciences. As an example, a variety of boundary conditions are supported by these codes. Periodic boundary conditions may be particularly familiar, as they are important constructs in allowing chemical scientists to simulate realistic long-range interactions in liquid and gas systems (crystals too). In addition, the codes support diverse geometries through the use of Cartesian, cylindrical -polar, and spherical-polar coordinates.

In addition to the mathematical ideas above, Zeus-MP draws on one of our old favorites, parallelization, for performance enhancement. In particular, Zeus-MP utilizes MPI (the Message Passing Interface), a parallel computing paradigm which gives the developer strict control over the communication of his data among processors.

Being able to take a look at new technology (to me at least) and seeing the incorporation some friendly, familiar ideas is sort of comforting. So why not sit back, relax, and visit Zeus?

http://zeus.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080

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