Mesh-based Monte Carlo (MMC) milestone release - v0.8.0
Qianqian Fang
It is my great pleasure to announce the availability of a new
release for the Mesh-based Monte Carlo (MMC) software
(version 0.8.0, URL: http://mcx.sourceforge.net/mmc/).
For registered users, you can directly access the new
software, including full source code, at the following URL:
https://orbit.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/frs/?group_id=39
Numerous updates have been committed in the past 7 months,
including the additions of several major new features, critical bug
fixes and performance improvements. All key features, including
reflective index mismatch at boundaries, have been rigorously
tested and compared against existing tools and literature results.
The computational efficiency of the software is at least twice
faster compared to the previous version. This release is
considered stable and is highly recommended to upgrade to.
The new features of this release include
1. *key* In addition to the Plucker-based ray-tracing, 3 new ray-tracing
algorithms had been implemented, including the Havel&Herout's
method (SSE4), Badouel's method and branchless Badouel's method
(SSE). The SSE-based ray-tracers are nearly twice faster than the
Plucker's method, resulting in 25% overall speed improvements
2. *key* MMC now supports recording partial path-lengths for
photons captured by detectors (similar to MCX)
3. *key* The random number generators and math functions were
accelerated signficantly by using SSE-based computation
4. *key* The boundary-reflection code was rigorously validated
and improved for better speed
5. *key* Enable atomic operations for the flux/energy deposit
calculations
6. A new input parameter, "--specular", allows users to consider the
specular reflection at the surface and compare results to MCML
and TIMOS
This version also fixes the following major issues:
1. Fixed a bug in savemmcmesh.m script to correctly reorient
all elements. This can effect all meshes generated previously.
2. Fixed a bug in sphdiffusionslab.m script. The old version will
generate erroneous analytically solutions from a sphere-in-slab
domain when the optical properties are different from those in
the paper.
Pre-compiled MMC binaries are provided for Windows (32/64bit),
Linux (32/64bit) and Mac OS (32/64bit). In all cases, a binary compiled
with a fast SFMT-19937 RNG (mmc_sfmt) is included along
with the default GLIBC 48bit RNG (mmc).
Packages named with "SSE4" tag can only be used on computers
with a CPU supporting SSE4 (bought within the past 3 years). SSE4
binaries are 25%~40% faster than the "multicore" binaries.
Please read the full Release notes and ChangeLogs for more details:
http://mcx.sf.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi?MMC/Doc/ReleaseNotes/0.8.0
http://mcx.sf.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi?MMC/ChangeLog
Please also check out the new FAQ entries at
http://mcx.sf.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi?MMC/Doc/FAQ
If you are interested in comparing MMC with your software/algorithm,
please contact me regarding the details on compilation and running
simulations.
Please post any questions to our mcx-users mailing list (subscription
is required)
http://groups.google.com/group/mmc-users?hl=en
Have fun with the fully updated and much faster MMC software!
Qianqian