Open-source framework for GPU-accelerated numerical relativity
We present GRACE, a new GPU-accelerated numerical-relativity framework designed to run efficiently on heterogeneous high-performance computing platforms. Developed from scratch and built exclusively on open-source libraries, GRACE employs Kokkos for performance portability across CPU and GPU architectures and p4est for adaptive mesh refinement. The code evolves the equations of ideal GRMHD -- with divergence-free magnetic fields maintained by constrained transport -- self-consistently coupled to the Einstein equations in the Z4c formulation, on fixed or adaptively refined grids. We validate the implementation against a suite of standard tests, ranging from magnetized shock tubes and the magnetic rotor in flat spacetime, through (magnetized) Bondi accretion onto a Schwarzschild black hole and the ringdown of a perturbed spinning puncture, to neutron-star oscillation spectra in fixed and dynamical spacetimes and the merger of binary black holes. As more demanding applications, we evolve two binary neutron-star mergers -- an equal-mass, unmagnetized system with an ideal-gas equation of state and an unequal-mass, magnetized system with a finite-temperature tabulated equation of state -- finding the inspiral dynamics to agree well with the FIL code. We also report single-device throughput together with strong- and weak-scaling results on multiple GPU and CPU architectures. GRACE is publicly released together with GRACEpy, a basic post-processing and data-analysis environment.
Authors
- Konrad Topolski (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9972-7143)
- Carlo Musolino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9955-3451)
- Elias R. Most (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0491-1210)
- Luciano Rezzolla (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1330-7103)
- Christian Ecker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8669-4300)
- Marie Cassing (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0244-2983)
- Khalil Pierre (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-1600-2110)
- Keneth Miler
- Harry Ho-Yin Ng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3453-7394)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical review. D/Physical review. D.
- Published
- 2026-11-02
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/yq78-m749
- Primary Topic
- Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- California Institute of Technology
- Strong
- Walter Greiner Gesellschaft
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft