List of Dependencies

WarpX depends on the following popular third party software. Please see installation instructions below.

• a mature C++17 compiler, e.g., GCC 9.1+, Clang 7, NVCC 11.0, MSVC 19.15 or newer

• CMake 3.24.0+

• Git 2.18+

• AMReX: we automatically download and compile a copy of AMReX

• PICSAR: we automatically download and compile a copy of PICSAR

and for Python bindings:

• pyAMReX: we automatically download and compile a copy of pyAMReX

• pybind11: we automatically download and compile a copy of pybind11

Optional dependencies include:

• MPI 3.0+: for multi-node and/or multi-GPU execution

• for on-node accelerated compute one of either:

  • OpenMP 3.1+: for threaded CPU execution or

  • CUDA Toolkit 11.7+: for Nvidia GPU support (see matching host-compilers) or

  • ROCm 5.2+ (5.5+ recommended): for AMD GPU support

  • oneAPI: for Intel GPU support

• FFTW3: for spectral solver (PSATD or IGF) support when running on CPU or SYCL

  • also needs the pkg-config tool on Unix

• BLAS++ and LAPACK++: for spectral solver (PSATD) support in RZ geometry

• Boost 1.66.0+: for QED lookup tables generation support

• openPMD-api 0.16.1+: we automatically download and compile a copy of openPMD-api for openPMD I/O support

  • see optional I/O backends, i.e., ADIOS2 and/or HDF5

• Ascent 0.8.0+: for in situ 3D visualization

• SENSEI 4.0.0+: for in situ analysis and visualization

• CCache: to speed up rebuilds (For CUDA support, needs version 3.7.9+ and 4.2+ is recommended)

• Ninja: for faster parallel compiles

• Python 3.9+

  • mpi4py

  • numpy

  • periodictable

  • picmistandard

  • lasy

  • see our requirements.txt file for compatible versions

If you are on a high-performance computing (HPC) system, then please see our separate HPC documentation.

For all other systems, we recommend to use a package dependency manager: Pick one of the installation methods below to install all dependencies for WarpX development in a consistent manner.