Physics-Aware Compression of Plasma Distribution Functions with GPU-Accelerated Gaussian Mixture Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hu, Andong, Pennati, Luca, Peng, Ivy, Markidis, Stefano
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hu, Andong
Pennati, Luca
Peng, Ivy
Markidis, Stefano
author_facet Hu, Andong
Pennati, Luca
Peng, Ivy
Markidis, Stefano
contents Data compression is a critical technology for large-scale plasma simulations. Storing complete particle information requires Terabyte-scale data storage, and analysis requires ad-hoc scalable post-processing tools. We propose a physics-aware in-situ compression method using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) to approximate electron and ion velocity distribution functions with a number of Gaussian components. This GMM-based method allows us to capture plasma features such as mean velocity and temperature, and it enables us to identify heating processes and generate beams. We first construct a histogram to reduce computational overhead and apply GPU-accelerated, in-situ GMM fitting within iPIC3D, a large-scale implicit Particle-in-Cell simulator, ensuring real-time compression. The compressed representation is stored using the ADIOS 2 library, thus optimizing the I/O process. The GPU and histogramming implementation provides a significant speed-up with respect to GMM on particles (both in time and required memory at run-time), enabling real-time compression. Compared to algorithms like SZ, MGARD, and BLOSC2, our GMM-based method has a physics-based approach, retaining the physical interpretation of plasma phenomena such as beam formation, acceleration, and heating mechanisms. Our GMM algorithm achieves a compression ratio of up to $10^4$, requiring a processing time comparable to, or even lower than, standard compression engines.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_14897
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Physics-Aware Compression of Plasma Distribution Functions with GPU-Accelerated Gaussian Mixture Models
Hu, Andong
Pennati, Luca
Peng, Ivy
Markidis, Stefano
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Data compression is a critical technology for large-scale plasma simulations. Storing complete particle information requires Terabyte-scale data storage, and analysis requires ad-hoc scalable post-processing tools. We propose a physics-aware in-situ compression method using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) to approximate electron and ion velocity distribution functions with a number of Gaussian components. This GMM-based method allows us to capture plasma features such as mean velocity and temperature, and it enables us to identify heating processes and generate beams. We first construct a histogram to reduce computational overhead and apply GPU-accelerated, in-situ GMM fitting within iPIC3D, a large-scale implicit Particle-in-Cell simulator, ensuring real-time compression. The compressed representation is stored using the ADIOS 2 library, thus optimizing the I/O process. The GPU and histogramming implementation provides a significant speed-up with respect to GMM on particles (both in time and required memory at run-time), enabling real-time compression. Compared to algorithms like SZ, MGARD, and BLOSC2, our GMM-based method has a physics-based approach, retaining the physical interpretation of plasma phenomena such as beam formation, acceleration, and heating mechanisms. Our GMM algorithm achieves a compression ratio of up to $10^4$, requiring a processing time comparable to, or even lower than, standard compression engines.
title Physics-Aware Compression of Plasma Distribution Functions with GPU-Accelerated Gaussian Mixture Models
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14897