Cactus Framework
 | |
| Developer(s) | Cactus Team |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 4.0 beta 15
/ November 2, 2004 |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Software framework |
| License | LGPL |
| Website | www.cactuscode.org |
Cactus is an open source problem solving environment designed for scientists and engineers. Its modular structure easily enables parallel computation across different architectures and collaborative code development between different groups. Cactus originated in the academic research community, where it was developed and used over many years by a large international collaboration of physicists and computational scientists.
The name Cactus comes from the design of a central core (or "flesh") which connects to application modules (or "thorns") through an extensible interface. Thorns can implement custom developed scientific or engineering applications, such as computational fluid dynamics. Other thorns from a standard computational toolkit provide a range of computational capabilities, such as parallel I/O, data distribution, or checkpointing.
Cactus runs on many architectures. Applications, developed on standard workstations or laptops, can be seamlessly run on clusters or supercomputers. Cactus provides easy access to many cutting edge software technologies being developed in the academic research community, including the Globus Toolkit, HDF5 parallel file I/O, the PETSc scientific library, adaptive mesh refinement, web interfaces, and advanced visualization tools.
History
Cactus was originally developed at the AEI, and is now developed jointly at AEI, Cardiff University, and LSU. There are several large packages built on Cactus, among others a general relativistic spacetime evolution code, an adaptive mesh refinement driver (Carpet), and a general relativistic hydrodynamics code (Whisky).
External links
- www.cactuscode.org — the Cactus Framework homepage
- Center for Computation & Technology
- Numerical relativity group at the Albert Einstein Institute
- www.carpetcode.org Carpet, an adaptive mesh refinement driver for Cactus
- www.whiskycode.org Whisky — the EU Network GR Hydrodynamics code
See also
- Application framework
- Software framework
- Software framework at the Free Dictionary
- Cactus the plant
- Embedded HTTP server