mcpartools 0.1.5

Set of tools to parallelize MC calculations on clusters

mcpartools is a software simplifying time consuming simulation of particle transport using Monte Carlo codes (Fluka, SHIELDHIT12A). We assume user has access to a computing cluster with batch processing software installed (i.e. slurm, torque) and wants to parallelize simulation by running it simultaneously on many computing nodes. mcpartools simplifies this process by generating necessary directory structures and scripts for starting calculations and collecting the results.

mcpartools provides a command line application called generatemc which works under Linux operating system (interpreter of Python programming language has to be also installed). No programming knowledge is required from user, but basic skills in working with terminal console are needed.

Quick installation guide

First be sure to have Python framework installed, then type:

pip install mcpartools

This command will automatically download and install mcpartools for all users in your system. In case you don’t have administrator rights, add --user flag to pip command. In this situation converter will be probably installed in ~/.local/bin directory.

For more detailed instruction, see installation guide.

Short documentation

Let us start with simple simulation of 10^6 of particles using Fluka MC code. Such simulation would probably take few hours when running on single CPU. It can be however faster, when you submit 100 parallel jobs, each running simulation of 10^4 particles. We assume that:

• you are logged in to the computing cluster, all commands are executed there

• mcpartools is installed on the cluster

• Fluka in installed on the cluster and rfluka is available as a command

• cluster has working slurm batch job software

• an example Fluka input file is located in $HOME/sample.inp

First step is to generate necessary scripts and directory structure. To accomplish this, type in terminal:

generatemc --jobs_no 100 --particle_no 100000 $HOME/sample.inp

New directory with a name similar to $HOME/run_20160913_084601 will be created. To start simulation, we call appriopriate script:

$HOME/run_20160913_084601/submit.sh

After the simulation is done (it may take few minutes), run following script to gather the results in a single directory:

$HOME/run_20160913_084601/collect.sh

Output files from 100 parallel jobs will be saved in $HOME/run_20160913_084601/output directory, ready to be analyzed or merged. In case the output is not satisfactory, new workspace can be created and whole process repeated from scratch.

More documentation dealing with advanced options can be found here https://mcpartools.readthedocs.io/

Features

• user-friendly parallelisation of particle transport simulations

• output collected in single directory

• workspace with logs and input files saved for bookkeeping

• Monte-Carlo codes support: SHIELD-HIT12A and Fluka

• cluster batch software support: slurm

• python2 and python3 compatible

• no external libraries needed

More documentation

Full documentation can be found here: https://mcpartools.readthedocs.io/

If you would like to download the code and modify it, read first contribution guide.