SailFFish - A lightweight fast Poisson solver for execution on both CPU & GPU.

The purpose of SailFFish is to provide an open source, easily linked fast Poisson solver with minimal dependencies. The software is configured for shared memory machines. At the heart of the solver is the fast fourier transform (FFT), which allows us to integrate the Poisson equation in frequency space. Transforms to and from the frequency space via FFTs are not carried out by SailFFish, but rather call existing (and very optimised) libraries through the inherited DataType class. Currently two compilation options exists: The first is the (deservedly) popular library FFTW for calculation on a CPU. The second is the high-performance NVIDIA FFT implementation cuFFT for calculation on a GPU. Solvers exist for 1D, 2D and 3D scalar and 3D vector input fields. A range of differential operators may be applied to modify the form of the Poisson equation being solved.

A 3D_Vector style solver with a curl differential operator has been used to solve for the velocity distribution (right half: x-velocity field) of a vortex ring (left half: voriticity contours).

A preprint has been prepared for SailFFish which contains a detailed overview of the software architecture along with a full set of validation cases.

Why should you use SailFFish?

• You want a relatively simple library for the calculation of the Poisson equation on a regular grid;
• You are not carrying out calculations with a distributed memory architecture;
• You want to use the GPU to optimise your calculations;
• You want to compile a lightweight executable for a specific form of the fast Poisson equation;
• You want an easy library or namespace which you can link to in your own software.

What does SailFFish do?

SailFish solves the Poisson equation

$$\nabla^2\psi = f$$

where the right-hand side $f$ is defined on a rectangular grid with regular grid spacing. The input/solution vector can be specified for either regular (cell boundary) or staggered (cell centre) grid configurations and can be defined as either scalar data or 3-vector data.

Which boundary conditions are available?

The solver can be executed as a bounded solver, whereby the boundary conditions (BC) are specified. In this case three types of solver are available:

• Periodic BC
• Dirichlet (even-symmetric) or Neumann (odd-symmetric) BC
  • Homogeneous BC: Two options exist for the eigenvalues: pseudo-spectral (SailFFish::PS) or finite-difference second-order (SailFFish::FD2)
  • Inhomogeneous BC: then arbitrary BCs may be specified however only with use of the (SailFFish::FD2) type eigenvalue.

Alternatively an unbounded solver may be applied, whereby the BCs need not be specified and the potential is treated as if the problem were unbounded. In this case a range of options exist for the calculation of the free-space Green's function.

What is the data architecture of SailFFish?

The functionality required for FFT plan setup, execution & destruction along with frequency space operations are wrapped up inside the DataType class. The base Solver class is derived from the choice of DataType class specified at compile time. This inheritence is described in the figure below.
Data architecture within SailFFish.
For users who wish to use another FFT library, it is simply a matter of specifying a new DataType class, linking to the library and ensuring the Solver class inherits this. For users who wish to implement specialized solver classes, it is simply a matter of creating a new derived class from the existing solvers.

Licensing and authorship

SailFFish is developed by Joseph Saverin and is distributed under the GNU General Public License Version 2.0, copyright © Joseph Saverin 2022.

How to use SailFFish

In order to use SailFFish you simply need to link to the Solvers.h header in the source directory and link to the appropriate libraries for the chosen DataType class.

Creating a bounded type solver

This is achieved by generating the associated Solver type and then carrying out the grid setup:

SailFFish::Grid_Type G = SailFFish::STAGGERED;
SailFFish::Bounded_Kernel K = SailFFish::FD2;
SailFFish::Poisson_Periodic_2D *Solver2DP = new SailFFish::Poisson_Periodic_2D(G,K);
int NX = 128;
int NY = 256;
float UnitX[2] = {-1.0, 1.0};
float UnitY2[2] = {-2.0, 2.0};
SailFFish::SFStatus Stat = Solver2DP->Setup(UnitX,UnitY2,NX,NY);

This will generate a 2D solver for the Poisson equation with periodic BCs. In the $x$ direction the grid extends between $-1$ and $1$ and has $128$ cells. In the $y$ direction the grid extends between $-2$ and $2$ and has $256$ cells. The input must be specified on a staggered grid, so that the input is specified at $128$ x $256$ cell-centred grid positions. The solution will be found on this same grid (with the same ordering) by using the finite-difference second-order eigenvalues. The options for grid type and bounded kernel are:

• Grid_Type {REGULAR, STAGGERED};
• Bounded_Kernel {PS, FD2};

Creating an unbounded type solver

This is achieved by generating the associated Solver type and then carrying out the grid setup:

SailFFish::Grid_Type G = SailFFish::REGULAR;
SailFFish::Unbounded_Kernel K = SailFFish::HEJ_G8;
SailFFish::Unbounded_Solver_3DV *Solver3DU = new SailFFish::Unbounded_Solver_3DV(G,K);
Solver3DU->Specify_Operator(SailFFish::CURL);
int NX = 128;
int NY = 256;
int NZ = 512;
float Unit[2] = {-1.0, 1.0};
SailFFish::SFStatus Stat = Solver3DU->Setup(Unit,Unit,Unit,NX,NY,NZ);

This will generate a 3D solver for the Poisson equation with unbounded BCs. This also illustrates where and how the differential operator is specified. In the $x$ direction the grid extends between $-1$ and $1$ and has $128$ cells. In the $y$ direction the grid extends between $-1$ and $1$ and has $256$ cells. In the $z$ direction the grid extends between $-1$ and $1$ and has $512$ cells. The input must be specified on a regular grid, so that the input is specified at $129$ x $257$ x $513$ cell-boundary grid positions. The solution will be found on this same grid (with the same ordering) by using the Hejlesen eighth-order Gaussian kernel. The options for the unbounded kernel and the differential operators are:

• Unbounded_Kernel {HEJ_S0, HEJ_G2, HEJ_G4, HEJ_G6, HEJ_G8, HEJ_G10};
• OperatorType {NONE, DIV, CURL, GRAD, NABLA};

Specifying input vector - f

In order to pass the input (right-hand side, or $f$) values, you need to construct a std::vector of the chosen floating point precision.

std::vector<float> Input = std::vector<float>(NT,1.0);
SailFFish::SFStatus Stat = Solver2DP->Set_Input(Input);

In this example (given for the 2D periodic case above) an array of a very uninteresting input field is constructed. The spatial ordering of the grid in SailFFish is row-major. This implies that as as you step through adjacent memory locations, the first dimension’s index varies most slowly and the last dimension’s index varies most quickly. This is then passed to the solver using the Set_Input function. This function has an SFStatus output type as a check is carried out to ensure that the correct number of grid node values are being passed. The following values are defined:

• SFStatus {NoError, DimError, MemError, SetupError, ExecError}; This can be used to abort calculation if an error type is thrown (this is done in the test cases).

Executing

This is carried out by calling the following three functions in this order:

Solver3DU->Forward_Transform();
Solver3DU->Convolution();
Solver3DU->Backward_Transform();

where the Solver3DU solver from above has been used as an example. This could be wrapped together into a single function, however as the user may wish to perform additional operations before or after the convolution, for flexibility it shall be left like this for now.

Extracting results

The solution $\psi$ on the grid can be extracted as follows:

std::vector<float> Output;
Solver2DP->Get_Output(Output);

The ordering is again row-major, as with the input. The output vector is automatically allocated with the correct size within the Get_Output function.

Exporting the source and solution on a grid

A method is defined within each 2D and 3D solver base classes which creates a .vti file. This allows visualisation of the source and solution fields with Paraview. The image of the vortex ring above was generated automatically with this function.

Citation information

An ArXiv preprint has been prepared which contains an overview of the solver, data architecture and a range of validation cases. This can be found at the following link.

Compilation

The compilation of SailFFish has been tested with GCC (v7.3). Two options are available for compiling:

• qmake: SailFFish was prepared with the cross-platform development environment Qt Creator. The .pro file required for compiling with qmake has been provided.
• CMake: The CMakeLists.txt file has been provided. Note: This is not thoroughly tested!

Floating point precision

SailFFish can be compiled to use either single or double floating point precision. Simply specify with the appropriate compiler flags: SinglePrec or DoublePrec

Choice of datatype

As described above, there are two native options for DataType in SailFFish. These are specified with the appropriate compiler flags:

• FFTW The code will compile such that the FFTW3 library is used.
• CUDA The code will compile such that the cuFFT library is used. In either case, it should be clear from the .pro or CMakeLists.txt files where you need to point to the corresponding directories and the libraries which must be linked.