Simwave: A finite difference simulator for acoustic waves propagation

Abstract

Simwave is an open-source software package for wave simulations in 2D or 3D domains. It solves the constant and variable density acoustic wave equation with the finite difference method and has support for domain truncation techniques, several boundary conditions, and the modelling of sources and receivers given a user defined acquisition geometry. The architecture of Simwave is designed for applications with geophysical exploration in mind. Its Python front-end enables straightforward integration with many existing Python scientific libraries for the composition of more complex workflows and applications (e.g., migration and inversion problems). Its back-end is implemented in C, enabling performance portability across a range of computing hardware and compilers including both CPUs and GPUs. Simwave also provides non-optimized versions of the algorithms, which can be used as benchmarks for high-performance computing systems, serving as a proxy application for actual production solvers used by the geophysical exploration industry for the identification of Oil and Gas reservoirs.