We are pleased to announce the third release (code name "Curie") of the Einstein Toolkit, an open, community developed software infrastructure for relativistic astrophysics. This release changed the equation of state interface from two competing (EOS_Base and EOSG_Base, also known as the old and the general EOS interface), to a completely new interface called EOS_Omni, also adding support for tabulated, microphysical EOSs in the process. In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous release in November 2010 have been included, and the testsuites have been checked also using OpenMP.
The Einstein Toolkit is a collection of 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 Carpet AMR infrastructure and the relativistic hydrodynamics code GRHydro (an updated and extended version of the public release of the Whisky code). 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 host weekly meetings that are open for anyone to join in.
Guiding principles for the design and implementation of the toolkit include: open, community-driven software development; well thought out and stable interfaces; separation of physics software from computational science infrastructure; provision of complete working production code; training and education for a new generation of researchers.
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>.
The Einstein Toolkit is primarily supported by NSF 0903973/0903782/0904015 (CIGR), and also by NSF 0701566/0855892 (XiRel), 0721915 (Alpaca), 0905046/0941653 (PetaCactus) and 0710874 (LONI Grid).
This release comprises the following tools, arrangements, and thorns (see this list intended for the GetComponents tool, described here). Each tool/arrangement/thorn may have its own licencing conditions, but all are available as open source. Green components are new in this release.
Cactus Flesh
CactusBase Standard Cactus thorns
CactusConnect
CactusElliptic
CactusIO
CactusNumerical
CactusPUGH
CactusPUGHIO
CactusTest
CactusUtils new: NoMPI
ExternalLibraries Interfaces to external libraries, new: zlib
Carpet Adaptive mesh refinement
EinsteinAnalysis Einstein Toolkit EinsteinBase EinsteinEOS new: EOS_Omni, others will be removed next release EinsteinEvolve LegoExcision will be removed next release EinsteinInitialData EinsteinUtils
McLachlan BSSN implementation
TAT/TATelliptic Various thorns
AEIThorns Thorns hosted at AEI, new: PunctureTracker, SystemStatistics
LSUThorns Thorns hosted at LSU, new: Vectors
Kranc Automated code generation
GetComponents Downloading tools and thorns new repository
SimFactory Building code and running simulations
The Einstein Toolkit thorns contain over 130 regression test cases. On a large portion of the tested machines, all of these testsuites pass, using both MPI and OpenMP.
The changes between this and the previous release include:
All repositories participating in this release carry a branch ET_2011_05 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 40 additional systems, including most HPC systems at LONI, NERSC, RZG, and TeraGrid.
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 "Curie" Release Team
Gabrielle Allen
Eloisa Bentivegna
Tanja Bode
Peter Diener
Roland Haas
Ian Hinder
Frank Löffler
Bruno Mundim
Christian D. Ott
Erik Schnetter
Eric Seidel
Michael Thomas