Parallelized and Vectorized Tracking Using Kalman Filters with CMS Detector Geometry and Events

¹ UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA 92093
² Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA 08544
³ Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA 14853
⁴ Fermilab, Batavia, IL, USA 60510-5011
⁵ University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA 97403

^* e-mail: mtadel@ucsd.edu

Published online: 17 September 2019

Abstract

The High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be characterized by greater pileup of events and higher occupancy, making the track reconstruction even more computationally demanding. Existing algorithms at the LHC are based on Kalman filter techniques with proven excellent physics performance under a variety of conditions. Starting in 2014, we have been developing Kalman-filter-based methods for track finding and fitting adapted for many-core SIMD processors that are becoming dominant in high-performance systems.

This paper summarizes the latest extensions to our software that allow it to run on the realistic CMS-2017 tracker geometry using CMSSW-generated events, including pileup. The reconstructed tracks can be validated against either the CMSSW simulation that generated the detector hits, or the CMSSW reconstruction of the tracks. In general, the code’s computational performance has continued to improve while the above capabilities were being added. We demonstrate that the present Kalman filter implementation is able to reconstruct events with comparable physics performance to CMSSW, while providing generally better computational performance. Further plans for advancing the software are discussed.