MC++ and a transport physics framework

Abstract

The Department of Energy has launched the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) to address a pressing need for more comprehensive computer simulation capabilities in the area of nuclear weapons safety and reliability. In light of the decision by the US Government to abandon underground nuclear testing, the Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship (SBSS) program is focused on using computer modeling to assure the continued safety and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile. The authors believe that the utilization of object-oriented design and programming techniques can help in this regard. Object-oriented programming (OOP) has become a popular model in the general software community for several reasons. MC++ is a specific ASCI-relevant application project which demonstrates the effectiveness of the object-oriented approach. It is a Monte Carlo neutron transport code written in C++. It is designed to be simple yet flexible, with the ability to quickly introduce new numerical algorithms or representations of the physics into the code. MC++ is easily ported to various types of Unix workstations and parallel computers such as the three new ASCI platforms, largely because it makes extensive use of classes from the Parallel Object-Oriented Methods and Applications (POOMA) C++ class library. The MC++ code has been successfully benchmarked using some simple physics test problems, has been shown to provide comparable serial performance and a parallel efficiency superior to that of a well-known Monte Carlo neutronics package written in Fortran, and was the first ASCI-relevant application to run in parallel on all three ASCI computing platforms.