ASCOT5: Forging the hammer for your nails
ASCOT5 is a high-performance computing code optimized for both CPUs and GPUs, widely used in academia and industry to study fast ion dynamics, runaway electron behavior, and impurity transport in fusion plasmas. Two years ago, ASCOT5 transitioned to an open-source model, catalyzing a transformation toward modern software engineering practices. Since then, we have introduced online tutorials, implemented automated testing, and enhanced portability to make our tool more accessible and robust.
This presentation provides a personal perspective on this journey—from researcher to research software engineer—highlighting the challenges and rewards of developing an open-source scientific tool for a broader community. Embracing open-source principles has encouraged us to leverage other open-source software, such as Conda, greatly facilitating ASCOT5’s evolution into an industry-ready tool.