Opticks: GPU ray traced optical photon simulation

Opticks is an open source project that accelerates optical photon simulation by integrating NVIDIA GPU ray tracing, accessed via the NVIDIA OptiX API, with Geant4 toolkit based simulations. Optical photon simulation times of 10 seconds per 100 million photons have been measured with the full JUNO geometry and optical model with a 3rd RTX generation GPU. The JUNO optical model incorporates optical processes inside PMTs including thin layer interference effects. The GPU geometry is auto-translated from the Geant4 geometry. Optical physics processes of scattering, absorption, scintillator reemission and boundary processes are implemented in CUDA based on Geant4. Wavelength-dependent material and surface properties as well as inverse cumulative distribution functions for reemission are interleaved into GPU textures providing fast interpolated property lookup or wavelength generation. In this work we describe performance measurements and new features developed to facilitate and optimize production usage of Opticks within the JUNO simulation framework. The features include geometry generalization enabling use of triangulated solids together with analytic geometry, out-of-core processing enabling simulation of events with more photons than can fit within available VRAM, interactive ray traced visualization and also the adoption of the Philox counterbased random number generator optimizing random number generation.

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Publication Details

Journal
EPJ Web of Conferences
Published
2025-01-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202533701093
Primary Topic
Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Opticks: GPU ray traced optical photon simulation

S.C. Blyth
EPJ Web of Conferences
Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies
article

Opticks: GPU ray traced optical photon simulation

S.C. Blyth
article en

Abstract

Opticks is an open source project that accelerates optical photon simulation by integrating NVIDIA GPU ray tracing, accessed via the NVIDIA OptiX API, with Geant4 toolkit based simulations. Optical photon simulation times of 10 seconds per 100 million photons have been measured with the full JUNO geometry and optical model with a 3rd RTX generation GPU. The JUNO optical model incorporates optical processes inside PMTs including thin layer interference effects. The GPU geometry is auto-translated from the Geant4 geometry. Optical physics processes of scattering, absorption, scintillator reemission and boundary processes are implemented in CUDA based on Geant4. Wavelength-dependent material and surface properties as well as inverse cumulative distribution functions for reemission are interleaved into GPU textures providing fast interpolated property lookup or wavelength generation. In this work we describe performance measurements and new features developed to facilitate and optimize production usage of Opticks within the JUNO simulation framework. The features include geometry generalization enabling use of triangulated solids together with analytic geometry, out-of-core processing enabling simulation of events with more photons than can fit within available VRAM, interactive ray traced visualization and also the adoption of the Philox counterbased random number generator optimizing random number generation.

EPJ Web of ConferencesVol. 337
Institute of High Energy Physics (CN)
Nvidia, National Natural Science Foundation of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 63%
Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies
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Opticks: GPU ray traced optical photon simulation — S.C. Blyth · EPJ Web of Conferences (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS