We are pleased to announce the first release (code name "Bohr") of the Einstein Toolkit, an open, community developed software infrastructure for relativistic astrophysics. The Einstein Toolkit is a collection of over 130 software components and tools for simulating and analyzing general relativistic astrophysical systems that builds on numerous software efforts in the numerical relativity community including CactusEinstein, the Whisky hydrodynamics code, and the Carpet AMR infrastructure. The Cactus Framework is used as the underlying computational infrastructure providing large-scale parallelization, general computational components, and a model for collaborative, portable code development. The toolkit includes modules to build complete codes for simulating black hole spacetimes as well as systems governed by relativistic hydrodynamics. Current development in the consortium is targeted at providing additional infrastructure for general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics.
The Einstein Toolkit uses a distributed software model and its different modules are developed, distributed, and supported either by the core team of Einstein Toolkit Maintainers, or by individual groups. Where modules are provided by external groups, the Einstein Toolkit Maintainers provide quality control for modules for inclusion in the toolkit and help coordinate support. The Einstein Toolkit Maintainers currently involve postdocs and faculty from five different institutions, and hold weekly meetings that are open for anyone to join in.
Guiding principles for the design and implementation of the toolkit include:
For more information about using or contributing to the Einstein Toolkit, or to join the Einstein Toolkit Consortium, please visit our web pages at <http://einsteintoolkit.org>.
We thank the numerous people who contributed to this software over the past many years; there are too many to be listed here. We also gratefully acknowledge those who helped in the past months to make this release happen. The Einstein Toolkit is primarily supported by NSF 0903973/0903782/0904015 (CIGR), and also by NSF 0701566/0855892 (XiRel), 0721915 (Alpaca), 0725070 (Blue Waters), and 0905046/0941653 (PetaCactus).
This release comprises the following tools, arrangements, and thorns. Each tool/arrangement/thorn may have its own licencing conditions, but all are available as open source:
All repositories participating in this release carry a branch ET_2010_06 marking this release. These release branches will be updated if severe errors are found.
This release has been tested on the following systems and architectures:
The Simulation Factory contains ready-to-use configuration details for more than 20 additional systems, including most HPC systems at LONI, NERSC, RZG, and TeraGrid.
The Einstein Toolkit thorns contain 89 regression test cases. While all test cases pass on important systems, there are unfortunately also some systems where certain test cases fail. We verified that this is because of accumulation of floating-point round-off error in most cases, and we will discuss this issue in a broader context on the mailing list in the near future.
The Einstein Toolkit web site contains online documentation for its thorns, and pointers for using it to build your own code. There is also a tutorial that explains how to download, build, and run the code for a simple binary black hole evolution. We invite you to join our mailing list <users@einsteintoolkit.org>.
On behalf of the Einstein Toolkit Consortium: the "Bohr" Release Team
Gabrielle Allen
Eloisa Bentivegna
Tanja Bode
Peter Diener
Roland Haas
Ian Hinder
Frank Löffler
Bruno Mundim
Erik Schnetter
Eric Seidel
June 17, 2010