Open AccessAccelerating mesh-based Monte Carlo method on modern CPU architectures
Author(s) -
Qianqian Fang,
David Kaeli
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.3.003223
Subject(s) - simd , computer science , monte carlo method , parallel computing , computational science , imaging phantom , computation , speedup , software , ray tracing (physics) , algorithm , mathematics , optics , physics , statistics , programming language
In this report, we discuss the use of contemporary ray-tracing techniques to accelerate 3D mesh-based Monte Carlo photon transport simulations. Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) based computation and branch-less design are exploited to accelerate ray-tetrahedron intersection tests and yield a 2-fold speed-up for ray-tracing calculations on a multi-core CPU. As part of this work, we have also studied SIMD-accelerated random number generators and math functions. The combination of these techniques achieved an overall improvement of 22% in simulation speed as compared to using a non-SIMD implementation. We applied this new method to analyze a complex numerical phantom and both the phantom data and the improved code are available as open-source software at http://mcx.sourceforge.net/mmc/.