Real-time end-to-end AO simulations at ELT scale on multiple GPUs with the COMPASS platform

Abstract

The COMPASS platform was designed to meet the need for high-performance for the simulation of AO systems. Taking advantage of the specific hardware architecture of the GPU, the COMPASS tool allows the AO scientist to obtain adequate execution speeds and to conduct large simulation campaigns scaled to the E-ELT dimensioning for a variety of AO flavors from SCAO to MOAO. On the latest GPU architecture (NVIDA Volta), execution speeds of several hundreds of short exposure PSF per second can be achieved for a SCAO system on the E-ELT, making the COMPASS platform a real-time end-to-end simulation tool. In this paper, we provide a full description of the critical physical models used in the simulation pipeline, review a range AO system configurations that can be addressed with COMPASS and report on the time to solution obtained for this systems. Scalability over multiple GPUs and multiple generations of GPUs is also discussed.