The Chroma Software System for Lattice QCD

TL;DR

Chroma provides a flexible, portable, and efficient C++ lattice QCD software toolbox built on the SciDAC stack, integrating QDP++ for lattice-wide types and PETE for expression templates, and interfacing with optimized kernels such as the BAGEL Dslash. It supports multiple fermion formulations (Wilson, Domain Wall, Overlap) and hadronic observables, with performance demonstrations on hardware from workstations to the QCDOC: showing efficient, architecture-aware computation via template expressions and high-performance kernels. The work contributes a cohesive, open-source framework (QMP, QLA, QDP, QIO, Chroma) that enables scalable, architecture-aware LQCD simulations and fosters collaboration among LHPC and UKQCD. The practical impact lies in enabling portable, high-efficiency LQCD calculations across diverse HPC platforms, backed by an extensible, community-driven software stack.

Abstract

We describe aspects of the Chroma software system for lattice QCD calculations. Chroma is an open source C++ based software system developed using the software infrastructure of the US SciDAC initiative. Chroma interfaces with output from the BAGEL assembly generator for optimised lattice fermion kernels on some architectures. It can be run on workstations, clusters and the QCDOC supercomputer.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Expression Transformation
• Figure 2: Performance on the QCDOC