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Glossary

Quick reference for recurring terminology across the Quokka documentation and reviews.

  • PR (Pull Request): a proposed code change waiting for review.
  • Revert: a follow-up change that undoes a previous merge to restore a known-good state.
  • ADR (Architecture Decision Record): a short document capturing an important technical decision, options considered, and the rationale.
  • CI (Continuous Integration): automated builds and tests that run on every change.
  • GPU backend (CUDA/HIP): the selected GPU programming platform chosen at compile time.
  • MPI: a standard for running a program across multiple processes (often across nodes).
  • Unit test: a small test for a single function or module.
  • Physics test (domain test): a small end-to-end run that checks scientifically meaningful results.
  • Regression test: a test that ensures behavior hasn’t unintentionally changed compared to a known baseline.
  • Benchmark: a timing or resource-usage measurement to track performance.
  • Debug build / Release build: debug enables extra checks and slower safety features; release is optimized for speed.
  • Stream (GPU): an ordered queue of GPU work; operations in a stream execute in sequence.
  • Seed (random): a number used to initialize a random number generator so results can be repeated.
  • Tolerance (absolute/relative): acceptable numerical error bounds (e.g., max difference allowed).
  • Baseline: a trusted reference result used for comparison.