OpenDiS Manifesto

Open Dislocation Simulator – Revolutionizing Dislocation Dynamics Simulations Through Open Source Collaboration

The OpenDiS Project is a community-driven initiative aimed at developing a robust open-source code framework and a code development platform for dislocation dynamics (DD) simulations. Our mission is to provide a high-performance, accessible, configurable, and extensible tool enabling researchers to explore the intricate world of dislocation lines and their impact on materials behavior.

Our Goals

  • Open Access: We maintain a public Git repository that welcomes all to download and use the code.

  • Community Development: We prioritize ease of development for all, making it accessible for anyone to create extension modules and contribute to the expanding OpenDiS repository.

  • Embracing Innovation: We constantly strive to adapt and harness the power of existing and emerging computing architectures, including GPU acceleration and distributed massively parallel computing thus ensuring that OpenDiS stays at the forefront of computational efficiency.

Our Motivation

We believe our field of study has reached the point where now it is the right time to initiate a community-shared method development and code writing effort intended to fully harness the progress made over the last several decades in dislocation theory, simulation algorithms, and computational paradigms. Democratizing DD development will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery for the benefit of all. Standardized code and data management practices will facilitate traceability of provenance of contributed code elements and associated data.

Key Features

  • Modular Design with Extensive Extensions: OpenDiS will feature a modular architecture that facilitates the development and integration of new extension modules, catering to a wide range of research applications.

  • Built-in Python Interface: A new Python interface will streamline simulation setup and enable easy interfacing with other programs and high-performance compute modules. This interface will simultaneously serve as a driver integrating high-performance compute modules into an efficient DD simulation as well as an easy to learn and experiment with development prototype.

  • Replaceable HPC modules: Compute intensive elements of the dislocation dynamics method will be delegated to swappable code modules specifically written to maximally accelerate DD simulations.

  • Rigorous Testing and Continuous Integration: Unit tests and continuous integration practices will ensure the code’s stability and reliability, providing users with confidence in their simulation results.

We invite you to join the OpenDiS project to shape the future of dislocation dynamics. Together, we can build an open-source code and develop an open collaboration platform for accelerating scientific innovation.