Cactus Framework
Open source collaborative software environment
title: "Cactus Framework" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["integrated-development-environments"] description: "Open source collaborative software environment" topic_path: "general/integrated-development-environments" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cactus_Framework" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Open source collaborative software environment ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Cactus Framework |
| logo | CactusCode Logo.png |
| logo size | 50px |
| developer | Cactus Team |
| repo | |
| latest_release_version | 4.18.0 |
| latest_release_date | May 29 2025 |
| operating_system | Cross-platform |
| genre | Software framework |
| license | LGPL |
| website | |
| :: |
| name = Cactus Framework | logo = CactusCode Logo.png | logo size = 50px | developer = Cactus Team | repo = | latest_release_version = 4.18.0 | latest_release_date = May 29 2025 | operating_system = Cross-platform | genre = Software framework | license = LGPL | website = Cactus is an open-source, problem-solving environment designed for scientists and engineers.{{cite journal | last1=Allen |first1=Gabrielle | last2=Benger |first2=Werner | last3=Goodale |first3=Tom | last4=Hege |first4=Hans-Christian | last5=Lanfermann |first5=Gerd | last6=Merzky |first6=Andre | last7=Radke |first7=Thomas | last8=Seidel |first8=Edward | last9=Shalf |first9=John | title= Solving Einstein's equations on supercomputers | date=1999 |journal=Computer |volume=32 |issue=12 |pages=52–58 |url=https://www.cct.lsu.edu/~gallen/AllPapers/CS_Allen99b.pdf |doi=10.1109/2.809251 |access-date=2021-07-22 | title=The cactus code: A problem solving environment for the grid | last1=Allen |first1=Gabrielle | last2=Benger |first2=Werner | last3=Goodale |first3=Tom | last4=Hege |first4=Hans-Christian | last5=Lanfermann |first5=Gerd | last6=Merzky |first6=Andre | last7=Radke |first7=Thomas | last8=Seidel |first8=Edward | last9=Shalf |first9=John | year=2000 | book-title=Proceedings the Ninth International Symposium on High-Performance Distributed Computing | publisher=IEEE | pages=253–260 | doi=10.1109/HPDC.2000.868657 | url = https://svn.cactuscode.org/arrangements/CactusArchive/cvs_cactus/trunk/cactus2/Publications/Papers/Cactus_Allen00a.pre.pdf | access-date=2021-07-22
The name Cactus comes from the design of a central core (or "flesh") which connects to application modules (or "thorns") through an extensible interface. Thorns can implement custom developed scientific or engineering applications, such as computational fluid dynamics. Other thorns from a standard computational toolkit provide a range of computational capabilities, such as parallel I/O, data distribution, or checkpointing.{{cite conference | title=The Cactus framework and toolkit: Design and applications | last1=Goodale |first1=Tom | last2=Allen |first2=Gabrielle | last3=Lanfermann |first3=Gerd | last4=Massò |first4=Joan | last5=Radke |first5=Thomas | last6=Seidel |first6=Edward | last7=Shalf |first7=John | year=2003 | series=LNCS, Vol. 2565 | book-title=High Performance Computing for Computational Science - VECPAR 2002: 5th International Conference | publisher=Springer | pages=197–227 | doi=10.1007/3-540-36569-9_13 | citeseerx=10.1.1.98.8838 | title=Component specification in the Cactus Framework: The Cactus Configuration Language | last1=Allen |first1=Gabrielle | last2=Goodale |first2=Tom | last3=Löffler |first3=Frank | last4=Rideout |first4=David | last5=Schnetter |first5=Erik | last6=Seidel |first6=Erik L. | year=2010 | book-title=11th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing | publisher=IEEE | pages=359–368 | doi=10.1109/GRID.2010.5698008 | arxiv=1009.1341
Cactus runs on many architectures. Applications, developed on standard workstations or laptops, can be seamlessly run on clusters or supercomputers. Cactus provides easy access to many cutting-edge software technologies being developed in the academic research community, including the Globus Toolkit, HDF5 parallel file I/O, the PETSc scientific library, adaptive mesh refinement, web interfaces, and advanced visualization tools.
History
Cactus was originally developed at the AEI, and is now developed jointly at AEI, Cardiff University, and the Center for Computation & Technology at LSU. There are several large packages built on Cactus, among others a general relativistic spacetime evolution code, an adaptive mesh refinement driver (Carpet), and a general relativistic hydrodynamics code (Whisky).
Staff with the LSU Center for Computation & Technology, who were part of the original group at AEI who created Cactus, celebrated the program's 10th birthday in April 2007.
References
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::