Dynamic load balancing of plasma particle-in-cell simulations: The taskfarm alternative

Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations frequently exhibit some degree of inhomogeneity in the distribution of particles. When running such codes in parallel, this inhomogeneity results in an imbalance of the particle-associated workload. As a remedy, plasma PIC simulations commonly make use of a dynamic domain decomposition that adjusts itself according to the momentary distribution of particles. We present and evaluate an alternative dynamic load-balancing method: a taskfarm-based scheme, where the total particle-associated work is traded among all processors according to their individual workload. It will be shown to be very efficient for simulations with highly inhomogeneous particle distributions.