MCdevelop – a universal framework for Stochastic Simulations

We present MCdevelop, a universal computer framework for developing and exploiting the wide class of Stochastic Simulations (SS) software. This powerful universal SS software development tool has been derived from a series of scientific projects for precision calculations in high energy physics (HEP), which feature a wide range of functionality in the SS software needed for advanced precision Quantum Field Theory calculations for the past LEP experiments and for the ongoing LHC experiments at CERN, Geneva. MCdevelop is a “spin-off” product of HEP to be exploited in other areas, while it will still serve to develop new SS software for HEP experiments. Typically SS involve independent generation of large sets of random “events”, often requiring considerable CPU power. Since SS jobs usually do not share memory it makes them easy to parallelize. The efficient development, testing and running in parallel SS software requires a convenient framework to develop software source code, deploy and monitor batch jobs, merge and analyse results from multiple parallel jobs, even before the production runs are terminated. Throughout the years of development of stochastic simulations for HEP, a sophisticated framework featuring all the above mentioned functionality has been implemented. MCdevelop represents its latest version, written mostly in C++ (GNU compiler gcc). It uses Autotools to build binaries (optionally managed within the KDevelop 3.5.3 Integrated Development Environment (IDE)). It uses the open-source ROOT package for histogramming, graphics and the mechanism of persistency for the C++ objects. MCdevelop helps to run multiple parallel jobs on any computer cluster with NQS-type batch system.Program summaryProgram title:MCdevelopCatalogue identifier: AEHW_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEHW_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Standard CPC licence, http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/licence/licence.htmlNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 48 136No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 355 698Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: ANSI C++Computer: Any computer system or cluster with C++ compiler and UNIX-like operating system.Operating system: Most UNIX systems, Linux. The application programs were thoroughly tested under Ubuntu 7.04, 8.04 and CERN Scientific Linux 5.Has the code been vectorised or parallelised?: Tools (scripts) for optional parallelisation on a PC farm are included.RAM: 500 bytesClassification: 11.3External routines: ROOT package version 5.0 or higher (http://root.cern.ch/drupal/).Nature of problem: Developing any type of stochastic simulation program for high energy physics and other areas.Solution method: Object Oriented programming in C++ with added persistency mechanism, batch scripts for running on PC farms and Autotools.Additional comments: Other requirements:
• GNU compiler gcc and GNU Build System Autotools – optionally within KDevelop 3.5.3 integrated development environment.
• NQS-type batch system (for running jobs in a parallel mode).Running time: For 106 events executed from Template 3.8 s – Intel Core 2 Duo, gcc 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4 – lobuntu 4), single thread.