Why Fortran 90?

Computer Simulation of Plasma

Computer simulations are very useful for understanding and predicting the transport of particles and energy in fusion energy devices called tokamaks. Tokamaks, which are toroidal in shape, confine the plasma with a combination of an external toroidal magnetic field and a self-generated poloidal magnetic field. The plasma confinement in these devices is not well understood and is worse than desired.

One of the two computer models used in the Numerical Turbulent Transport Project is a gyrokinetic code, which is a reduced particle-in-cell (PIC) code that follows the trajectories of guiding centers of particles, neglecting the rapid rotation around the magnetic field. Particle-in-Cell codes integrate the trajectories of many particles subject to electromagnetic forces, both external and self-generated. These forces are calculated from a set of field equations (usually Maxwell's equations or a subset) on a grid. The particle's coordinates are described by continuous variables. The source terms in Maxwell's equations (charge and/or current density) are calculated on a grid by inverse interpolation. After the field equations have been solved on the grid, the forces on the particles are found by interpolation from the grid.

Fortran 77 and Fortran 90 Programming Comparison

In a one-dimensional plasma PIC program, advancing particles in space and depositing charge to the field may look like the following in Fortran 77:

     dimension part(idimp,np), q(nx), fx(nx)
     data qme, dt /-1.,.2/
     call push1 (part,fx,qtme,dt,wke,idimp,np,nx)
     call dpost1 (part,q,qme,np,idimp,nx)

where an array of particles (part), charge density field (q), electric field (fx), and various constants describing the particles, are used in advancing particles (push1) and depositing charge (dpost).

Even in this simple example, the code would be clearer and easier to manipulate if the particle and field information were encapsulated into logically related units:

     USE plasma_module
     TYPE (species) :: electrons, ions
     TYPE (fields) :: charge_density, electric_field
     REAL :: dt = .2
     call plasma_push1 (electrons, electric_field, dt)
     call plasma_dpost1 (electrons, charge_density)

In this Fortran 90 example the collection of electrons, with their properties, are localized to the definition of the species class. The parameters have been simplified, they represent problem related abstractions and many details of the implementation have been information-hidden. These are important concepts in object-oriented programming and design. The paper:

describes many of these issues in greater detail (as do additional publications available at this site). Notes for a talk on the same subject are available:

Fortran 90 modules allow classes to be defined, from which objects can be created. A portion of the species_class is illustrated with a member function for the push1 operation:

      MODULE species_class
      USE species_descriptor_class
         TYPE species
            PRIVATE
            TYPE (species_descriptor) :: descriptor
            REAL, DIMENSION(:,:), POINTER :: coordinates
         END TYPE species
         INTERFACE new
            MODULE PROCEDURE species_init
         END INTERFACE
      CONTAINS 
      !  Initialization of particle species 
         SUBROUTINE species_init(this,species_args,idimp,nop)
         TYPE (species), INTENT(inout) :: this
         TYPE (species_descriptor), INTENT(in) :: species_args
         INTEGER, INTENT(in) :: idimp,nop
            ! code details omitted...
         END SUBROUTINE species_init 
      !  Advance species particles 
         SUBROUTINE push1 (this,fx,dt)
         TYPE (species), INTENT(inout) :: this
         REAL, DIMENSION (:), INTENT(in) :: fx
         REAL, INTENT(in) :: dt
            ! code details omitted...
         END SUBROUTINE push1
      END MODULE species_class

The species object can be created and initialized by calling the overloaded function new. The species is defined with two components, a descriptor specifying species properties and a pointer to a dynamically allocated two-dimensional array of reals. The use statement allows data and functions from the species_descriptor_class to be used in building the species_class. Although inheritance is not natively supported in Fortran 90 some forms can be constructed, including composition inheritance and some forms of sub-typing inheritance.

Why Fortran 90?

The new constructs, many of which have not been presented in the simple example above, encourage the creation of abstract data types, encapsulation, information hiding, inheritance, function overloading, generic programming and many features (beyond array-syntax) to ensure the safe development of advanced programs. Many of these ideas can support object-oriented concepts and since Fortran 90 is a subset of High Performance Fortran, the language forms a migration path to parallel computation using these techniques. However, the fundamental features of Fortran 90 can be beneficial even if the object-oriented concepts are not applied.

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