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Brugger, Eric

Publications and source records attributed to Brugger, Eric.

The ECP ALPINE project: In situ and post hoc visualization infrastructure and analysis capabilities for exascale

A significant challenge on an exascale computer is the speed at which we compute results exceeds by many orders of magnitude the speed at which we save these results. Therefore the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) ALPINE project focuses on providing exascale-ready visualization solutions including in situ processing. In situ visualization and analysis runs as the simulation is run, on simulations results are they are generated avoiding the need to save entire simulations to storage for later analysis. The ALPINE project made post hoc visualization tools, ParaView and VisIt, exascale ready and developed in situ algorithms and infrastructures. The suite of ALPINE algorithms developed under ECP includes novel approaches to enable automated data analysis and visualization to focus on the most important aspects of the simulation. Many of the algorithms also provide data reduction benefits to meet the I/O challenges at exascale. ALPINE developed a new lightweight in situ infrastructure, Ascent.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Visualization at exascale: Making it all work with VTK-m

The VTK-m software library enables scientific visualization on exascale-class supercomputers. Exascale machines are particularly challenging for software development in part because they use GPU accelerators to provide the vast majority of their computational throughput. Algorithmic designs for GPUs and GPU-centric computing often deviate from those that worked well on previous generations of high-performance computers that relied on traditional CPUs. Fortunately, VTK-m provides scientific visualization algorithms for GPUs and other accelerators. VTK-m also provides a framework that simplifies the implementation of new algorithms and adds a porting layer to work across multiple processor types. This paper describes the main challenges encountered when making scientific visualization available at exascale. Here, we document the surprises and obstacles faced when moving from pre-exascale platforms to the final exascale designs and the performance on those systems including scaling studies on Frontier, an exascale machine with over 37,000 AMD GPUs. We also report on the integration of VTK-m with other exascale software technologies. Finally, we show how VTK-m helps scientific discovery for applications such as fusion and particle acceleration that leverage an exascale supercomputer.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A terminology for in situ visualization and analysis systems

The term "in situ processing" has evolved over the last decade to mean both a specific strategy for visualizing and analyzing data and an umbrella term for a processing paradigm. The resulting confusion makes it difficult for visualization and analysis scientists to communicate with each other and with their stakeholders. To address this problem, a group of over 50 experts convened with the goal of standardizing terminology. This paper summarizes their findings and proposes a new terminology for describing in situ systems. An important finding from this group was that in situ systems are best described via multiple, distinct axes: integration type, proximity, access, division of execution, operation controls, and output type. This paper discusses these axes, evaluates existing systems within the axes, and explores how currently used terms relate to the axes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Fast Multiresolution Reads of Massive Simulation Datasets

Today’s massively parallel simulation codes can produce output ranging up to many terabytes of data. Utilizing this data to support scientific inquiry requires analysis and visualization, yet the sheer size of the data makes it cumbersome or impossible to read without computational resources similar to the original simulation. We identify two broad classes of problems for reading data and present effective solutions for both. The first class of data reads depends on user requirements and available resources. Tasks such as visualization and user-guided analysis may be accomplished using only a subset of variables with a restricted spatial extent at a reduced resolution. The other class of reads requires full resolution multivariate data to be loaded, for example to restart a simulation. We show that utilizing the hierarchical multiresolution IDX data format enables scalable and efficient serial and parallel read access on a variety of hardware from supercomputers down to portable devices. Here, we demonstrate interactive view-dependent visualization and analysis of massive scientific datasets using low-power commodity hardware, and we compare read performance with other parallel file formats for both full and partial resolution data.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗