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Pakin, Scott

Publications and source records attributed to Pakin, Scott.

At least 19 records

The ECP SICM project: Managing complex memory hierarchies for exascale applications

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP)’s Simplified Interface to Complex Memories (SICM) effort focuses on developing universal interfaces for discovering, managing, and sharing data across complex memory hierarchies. These facilitate the exploitation of emerging memory technologies and support precise control over their various trade-offs such as high-bandwidth versus low-latency, persistent versus ephemeral, high-capacity versus low-capacity, and near-CPU versus near-GPU. SICM comprises three interrelated components: a low-level interface, a high-level interface, and a persistent-heap interface. The low-level SICM interface is intended for system and run-time developers as well as expert application developers who prefer full control of the memory objects used within their application. The high-level SICM interface builds upon the low-level interface, employing application-level profiling and analysis to optimize data management for complex memory hierarchies. The persistent-heap interface provides applications with a persistent memory allocator that can allocate custom C++ data structures in both block-storage and byte-addressable persistent memories.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum-centric supercomputing for materials science: A perspective on challenges and future directions

Computational models are an essential tool for the design, characterization, and discovery of novel materials. Computationally hard tasks in materials science stretch the limits of existing high-performance supercomputing centers, consuming much of their resources for simulation, analysis, and data processing. Quantum computing, on the other hand, is an emerging technology with the potential to accelerate many of the computational tasks needed for materials science. In order to do that, the quantum technology must interact with conventional high-performance computing in several ways: approximate results validation, identification of hard problems, and synergies in quantum-centric supercomputing. Here in this paper, we provide a perspective on how quantum-centric supercomputing can help address critical computational problems in materials science, the challenges to face in order to solve representative use cases, and new suggested directions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Quantum optimization algorithms: Energetic implications

Since the dawn of quantum computing (QC), theoretical developments like Shor's algorithm proved the conceptual superiority of QC over traditional computing. However, such quantum supremacy claims are difficult to achieve in practice because of the technical challenges of realizing noiseless qubits. In the near future, QC applications will need to rely on noisy quantum devices that offload part of their work to classical devices. One way to achieve this is by using parameterized quantum circuits in optimization or even in machine learning tasks. The energy requirements of quantum algorithms have not yet been studied extensively. Here in this article, we explore several optimization algorithms using both theoretical insights and numerical experiments to understand their impact on energy consumption. Specifically, we highlight why and how algorithms like quantum natural gradient descent, simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximations or circuit learning methods, are at least 2x to 4x more energy efficient than their classical counterparts; why feedback-based quantum optimization is energy-inefficient; and how techniques like Rosalin can improve the energy efficiency of other algorithms by a factor of ≥2 0 x. Finally, we use the NchooseK high-level programming model to run optimization problems on both gate-based quantum computers and quantum annealers. Empirical data indicate that these optimization problems run faster, have better success rates, and consume less energy on quantum annealers than on their gate-based counterparts.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum-centric Supercomputing for Materials Science: A Perspective on Challenges and Future Directions

Computational models are an essential tool for the design, characterization, and discovery of novel materials. Hard computational tasks in materials science stretch the limits of existing high-performance supercomputing centers, consuming much of their simulation, analysis, and data resources. Quantum computing, on the other hand, is an emerging technology with the potential to accelerate many of the computational tasks needed for materials science. In order to do that, the quantum technology must interact with conventional high-performance computing in several ways: approximate results validation, identification of hard problems, and synergies in quantum-centric supercomputing. In this paper, we provide a perspective on how quantum-centric supercomputing can help address critical computational problems in materials science, the challenges to face in order to solve representative use cases, and new suggested directions.

Alexeev, Yuri↗

Reimagining Codesign for Advanced Scientific Computing: Report for the ASCR Workshop on Reimagining Codesign

In March 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program convened the Workshop on Reimagining Codesign. The workshop, also known as ReCoDe, was organized around discussions on eight topic areas: (1) codesign for traditional high-performance computing workloads; (2) codesign of memory/storage systems; (3) codesign of machine learning, neuromorphic, quantum, and other non-von Neumann accelerators; (4) codesign for edge computing and processing at experimental instruments; (5) codesign for security and privacy; (6) hardware design tools and open-source hardware for high-productivity codesign; (7) tools, software stack, and programming languages for high-productivity codesign; and (8) quantitative tools and data collection for modeling and simulation for codesign. The panels identified four Priority Research Directions from these deliberations: (1) breakthrough computing capabilities with targeted heterogeneity and rapid design; (2) software and applications that embrace radical architecture diversity; (3) engineered security and integrity, from transistors to applications; and (4) design with data-rich processes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

QuanSimBench

QuanSimBench is a software program that performs a gate-by-gate simulation of a quantum computer with a full state vector formulation. It simulates a simplified version of Shor's algorithm with increasing number of qubits until resources are exhausted. The score (states/s) is how fast the Approximate Quantum Fourier Transform can be computed (the modular exponentiation is not timed). The goal is to quantify the ability of a computer to simulate ideal quantum circuits.

Pakin, Scott↗

Billion-Core Monte Carlo

The copyrightable material is a set of software whose goal is to explore the use of Monte Carlo methods at extreme processor counts. This will include application software, libraries, middleware, various system software, and possibly compilers and translators

Pakin, Scott↗

Non-Proprietary Companion to the Q1 CY2021 PathForward Final Assessment (WBS 2.4.1, Milestone PM-HI-1040)

The PathForward element of the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) Hardware and Integration (HI) focus area has met its goals of preparing the US industry for exascale system procurements and generally improving US competitiveness in the worldwide computing market. This report is a companion to the deliverable for the ECP milestone PM-HI-1040, Assess PathForward Impact Against Exascale Hardware Challenges, which gives a summary of the final status of each PathForward project, describes progress achieved against PathForward contract milestones, and includes a final assessment of each vendor’s progress on key exascale challenges. This companion document details the results of the PathForward research to the extent possible without disclosing proprietary information and the impact on products and US exascale systems. In addition, it captures lessons learned in order to inform future projects in general and in high-performance computing in particular.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Position Papers for the ASCR Workshop on Reimagining Codesign

On behalf of the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program in the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, we are organizing a Workshop on Reimagining Codesign (ReCoDe). Codesign is the process of jointly designing interoperating components of a computing system—in particular: applications, algorithms, system software, programming models, and the hardware on which they run. The goal is to maximize the overall performance, efficiency, and other desirable qualities of the system as a whole. Codesign is a standard methodology in the embedded-systems community, where space, power, and cost constraints are commonly pitted against execution speed for a tightly constrained feature set. Over the last decade, the DOE has invested in codesign efforts to foster the development of exascale computing systems for broad classes of scientific and engineering applications. The ReCoDe workshop hopes to explore how scientific applications of interest to the DOE can be accelerated through close interactions with hardware designers and software-stack developers, in which all components adapt to each other’s requirements and constraints. We want to answer the question of what are the key tools and methodologies for accomplishing codesign in today’s computing landscape, and what will be the highest impact targets for meeting DOE’s emerging mission requirements. This workshop aims to bring together DOE, industry, and academia to identify opportunities to build on past codesign successes and identify new areas that are either emerging or that may need reimagining for the future. We want to continue to find opportunities that can be pursued as a joint effort and continue to break down the traditional customer/vendor dichotomy with true partnerships. From this work, DOE will benefit from increased application performance relative to what stock hardware or existing general-purpose roadmaps can provide, and vendors will benefit from expanding their hardware’s capabilities to address needs they might have not otherwise anticipated and thereby create more widespread interest in their products. The workshop will be structured around a set of breakout sessions, with every attendee expected to participate actively in the discussions. Afterward, workshop attendees—from DOE, industry, and academia—will produce a report for ASCR that summarizes the findings made during the workshop.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Modeling Universal Globally Adaptive Load-Balanced Routing

Universal globally adaptive load-balanced (UGAL) routing has been proposed for various interconnection networks and has been deployed in a number of current-generation supercomputers. Although UGAL-based schemes have been extensively studied, most existing results are based on either simulation or measurement. Without a theoretical understanding of UGAL, multiple questions remain: For which traffic patterns is UGAL most suited? Furthermore, what determines the performance of the UGAL-based scheme on a particular network configuration? Here, we develop a set of throughput models for UGALbased on linear programming. We show that the throughput models are valid across the torus, Dragonfly, and Slim Fly network topologies. Finally, we identify a robust model that can accurately and efficiently predict UGAL throughput for a set of representative traffic patterns across different topologies. Our models not only provide a mechanism to predict UGAL performance on large-scale interconnection networks but also reveal the inner working of UGAL and further our understanding of this type of routing.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

TPR: Traffic Pattern-based Adaptive Routing for Dragonfly Networks

The Cray Cascade architecture uses Dragonfly as its interconnect topology and employs a globally adaptive routing scheme called UGAL. UGAL directs traffic based on link loads but may make inappropriate adaptive routing decisions in various situations, which degrades its performance. Here in this work, we propose traffic pattern-based adaptive routing (TPR) for Dragonfly that improves UGAL by incorporating a traffic pattern-based adaptation mechanism. The idea is to explicitly use the link usage statistics that are collected in performance counters to infer the traffic pattern, and to take the inferred traffic pattern plus link loads into consideration when making adaptive routing decisions. Furthermore, our performance evaluation results on a diverse set of traffic conditions indicate that by incorporating the traffic pattern-based adaptation mechanism, TPR is much more effective in making adaptive routing decisions and achieves significant lower latency under low load and higher throughput under high load than its underlying UGAL.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Performing fully parallel constraint logic programming on a quantum annealer

A quantum annealer exploits quantum effects to solve a particular type of optimization problem. The advantage of this specialized hardware is that it effectively considers all possible solutions in parallel, thereby potentially outperforming classical computing systems. However, despite quantum annealers having recently become commercially available, there are relatively few high-level programming models that target these devices. In this article, we show how to compile a subset of Prolog enhanced with support for constraint logic programming into a two-local Ising-model Hamiltonian suitable for execution on a quantum annealer. In particular, we describe the series of transformations one can apply to convert constraint logic programs expressed in Prolog into an executable form that bears virtually no resemblance to a classical machine model yet that evaluates the specified constraints in a fully parallel manner. We evaluate our efforts on a 1,095-qubit D-Wave 2X quantum annealer and describe the approach's associated capabilities and shortcomings.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗