  Running kinetic plasma physics simulations using grid-based solvers is very
demanding both in terms of memory as well as computational cost. This is
primarily due to the up to six-dimensional phase space and the associated
unfavorable scaling of the computational cost as a function of grid spacing
(often termed the curse of dimensionality). In this paper, we present 4d, 5d,
and 6d simulations of the Vlasov--Poisson equation with a split-step
semi-Lagrangian discontinuous Galerkin scheme on graphic processing units
(GPUs). The local communication pattern of this method allows an efficient
implementation on large-scale GPU-based systems and emphasizes the importance
of considering algorithmic and high-performance computing aspects in unison. We
demonstrate a single node performance above 2 TB/s effective memory bandwidth
(on a node with 4 A100 GPUs) and show excellent scaling (parallel efficiency
between 30% and 67%) for up to 1536 A100 GPUs on JUWELS Booster.
