These days, graphical processing units (GPUs) deliver performance comparable to that of hundreds of CPU cores. This level of performance allows certain classes of simulations to be run in-house on a standard consumer workstation, eliminating the need for a cluster. In this paper, it is shown that medium-resolution, 2D radiation hydrodynamics simulations for laser-driven inertial confinement fusion with realistic 3D laser raytracing can now be conducted on a single consumer device. A novel raytracing module has indeed been developed for the 2D Lagrangian radiation-hydro-nuclear code DUED (Atzeni 1986 Comput. Phys. Commun.43 107–24; Atzeni et al 2005 Comput. Phys. Commun.169 153–9) to leverage the computational power of GPUs. By employing 3D raytracing, more realistic investigations of laser-driven plasmas become feasible, with a particular focus on perturbations resulting from non-uniform laser irradiation.
This paper presents a novel GPU-based 3D raytracing module for the DUED laser fusion simulation code, enabling more realistic investigations of laser-driven plasmas and their perturbations from non-uniform laser irradiation on a single consumer device.