Post-doctorate position (M/F) : Exascale Port of a 3D Sparse PIC Simulation Code for Plasma Modeling

CNRS - National Center for Scientific Research; France; On-site; EUR 23,000 - 35,000; Full time

Job summary

The CNRS - Laboratoire plasma et conversion d'énergie in France is recruiting for an engineering physics researcher to work on the MATURATION ANR project. The role involves porting a 3D sparse-PIC code to exascale, optimizing CPU algorithms, enabling GPU porting, and exploring performance-portable programming models such as Kokkos or StarPU.

You will collaborate with project partners, share best software engineering practices, and publish study results while ensuring code handover to the

Qualifications

• Engineering degree or PhD in computer science or physics with HPC.
• Experience in Fortran, C or C++ programming for HPC.
• Experience in high-performance computing and parallel programming, in particular GPU.
• A good knowledge of English and teamwork.

Responsibilities

• Participate in Exascale porting of 3D sparse-PIC code with distributed parallelism and GPU porting.
• Investigate new programming models for performance portability (Kokkos/StarPU).
• Analyze code performance on recent CPU/GPU architectures.
• Enhance software engineering practices for the codebase.
• Publish results of the study.
• Hand over code handling to supervisory team.

Skills

Fortran

C

C++

High-Performance Computing

Parallel programming

GPU

Education

Engineering degree / PhD in computer science or physics with high-performance computing

Tools

Kokkos

StarPU

Job description

Organisation/Company CNRS Department Laboratoire plasma et conversion d'énergie Research Field Engineering Physics Technology Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Application Deadline 17 Nov 2026 - 23:59 (UTC) Country France Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 35 Offer Starting Date 15 Jan 2027 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

The person recruited will be involved in the ANR project called MATURATION ( https://www.math.univ-toulouse.fr/~narski/MATURATION/ ) based on the use of sparse grids coupled with the Particle-In-Cell (PIC) approach to study plasma physics. The aim will be to port to exascale architectures an initial 3D simulation code developed as part of previous work [1]. This work will initially focus on scaling up (distributed memory), optimizing CPU algorithms (vectorization) and further GPU porting. The exploration of C++ programming models for performance portability, such as Kokkos or StarPU, will form a second part. A comparative study will evaluate the different implementations in terms of both performance and portability. Performance studies will be carried out on various CPU and GPU technologies, using local resources and access to national supercomputers. The person recruited will also be involved in setting up and sharing best practices in software engineering. This work will be carried out in close interaction with the other MATURATION project partners.

[1] - Guillet, C. (2023). Approche sur grilles parcimonieuses pour accélérer la méthode PIC (PhD, Toulouse 3).

• Participate in the Exascale porting of 3D sparse-PIC code, including distributed parallelism, vectorization, and GPU porting.
• Investigate new programming models to achieve performance portability.
• Analyze code performance on various recent CPU and GPU architectures.
• Enhance software engineering practices related to the code.
• Publish the results of the study.
• Hand over the code handling to the supervisory team.

The Maison de la Simulation is a joint laboratory between CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay and Université Versailles Saint-Quentin. It specializes in high performance computing and numerical simulations in close connection with physical applications, parallel software engineering, programming models, visualization techniques, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.

• Engineering degree / PhD computer science or physics with high-performance computing
• Experience in Fortran, C or C++ programming
• Experience in high-performance computing and parallel programming, in particular GPU
• Experience in plasma PIC simulation would be highly appreciated.
• A good knowledge of English is required, as well as the ability to work in a team.

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