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At least 235 records · Page 13

Fast correlation function calculator: A high-performance pair-counting toolkit

A novel high-performance exact pair-counting toolkit called fast correlation function calculator (FCFC) is presented. With the rapid growth of modern cosmological datasets, the evaluation of correlation functions with observational and simulation catalogues has become a challenge. High-efficiency pair-counting codes are thus in great demand. We introduce different data structures and algorithms that can be used for pair-counting problems, and perform comprehensive benchmarks to identify the most efficient algorithms for real-world cosmological applications. We then describe the three levels of parallelisms used by FCFC, SIMD, OpenMP, and MPI, and run extensive tests to investigate the scalabilities. Finally, we compare the efficiency of FCFC with alternative pair-counting codes. The data structures and histogram update algorithms implemented in FCFC are shown to outperform alternative methods. FCFC does not benefit greatly from SIMD because the bottleneck of our histogram update algorithm is mainly cache latency. Nevertheless, the efficiency of FCFC scales well with the numbers of OpenMP threads and MPI processes, even though speedups may be degraded with over a few thousand threads in total. FCFC is found to be faster than most (if not all) other public pair-counting codes for modern cosmological pair-counting applications.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Evolution of the Data Quality Monitoring and Prompt Processing System in the proto DUNE-SP experiment

The DUNE Collaboration currently operates an experimental program based at CERN which includes a beam test and an extended cosmic ray run of two large-scale prototypes of the massive Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) for the DUNE Far Detector. The volume of data collected by the single-phase prototype (protoDUNE-SP) amounts to 3PB and the sustained rate of data sent to mass storage is O(100) MB/s. Data Quality Monitoring was implemented by directing a fraction of the data stream to the protoDUNE prompt processing system (p3s) which is optimized for continuous low-latency calculation of the vital detector metrics and various graphics including event displays. It served a crucial role throughout the life cycle of the experiment. We present our experience in leveraging the CERN computing environment and operating the system over an extended period of time, while adapting to evolving requirements and computing platform.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Heterogeneous data-processing optimization with CLARA’s adaptive workflow orchestrator

The hardware landscape used in HEP and NP is changing from homogeneous multi-core systems towards heterogeneous systems with many different computing units, each with their own characteristics. To achieve maximum performance with data processing, the main challenge is to place the right computing on the right hardware. In this paper, we discuss CLAS12 charge particle tracking workflow orchestration that allows us to utilize both CPU and GPU to improve the performance. The tracking application algorithm was decomposed into micro-services that are deployed on CPU and GPU processing units, where the best features of both are intelligently combined to achieve maximum performance. In this heterogeneous environment, CLARA aims to match the requirements of each micro-service to the strength of a CPU or a GPU architecture. A predefined execution of a micro-service on a CPU or a GPU may not be the most optimal solution due to the streaming data-quantum size and the data-quantum transfer latency between CPU and GPU. So, the CLARA workflow orchestrator is designed to dynamically assign micro-service execution to a CPU or a GPU, based on the online benchmark results analyzed for a period of real-time data-processing.

Gyurjyan, Vardan↗

Integration of RNTuple in ATLAS Athena

After using ROOT’s TTree I/O subsystem for over two decades and storing more than an exabyte of compressed High Energy Physics (HEP) data, advances in technology have motivated a complete redesign, RNTuple, which breaks backward-compatibility to take better advantage of these storage options. The RNTuple I/O subsystem has been designed to address performance bottlenecks and other shortcomings of TTree. Specifically, RNTuple comes with an updated, more compact binary data format that can be stored both in ROOT files and natively in object stores. It is designed for modern storage hardware (e.g. high-throughput low-latency NVMe SSDs), and provides robust and easy to use interfaces. The binary format of RNTuple is scheduled to become production grade in 2024, and recently has become mature enough to start exploring the integration into software used by HEP experiments. In this contribution, we discuss the developments to support the features as required by the ATLAS analysis Event Data Model (EDM) in RNTuple, which will enable its integration into the Athena software framework. With these developments in place, we evaluate the performance of the current most recent versions of RNTuple-based ATLAS data sets and compare this to that of TTree.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Data Placement Optimization for ATLAS in a Multi-Tiered Storage System within a Data Center

Scientific experiments and computations, especially in High Energy Physics, are generating and accumulating data at an unprecedented rate. Effectively managing this vast volume of data while ensuring efficient data analysis poses a significant challenge for data centers, which must integrate various storage technologies. This paper proposes addressing this challenge by designing and developing a precise data popularity prediction model utilizing state-of-theart AI/ML techniques. This model is crafted from the analysis of ATLAS data and access patterns. It enables us to migrate infrequently accessed data to more economical storage media, such as tape drives, while storing frequently accessed data on faster yet costlier storage media like HDD or SSD. This strategic approach ensures data is placed optimally into the appropriate storage classes, thereby maximizing storage capacity while minimizing data access latency for end-users. Furthermore, the paper includes a performance evaluation of the prediction model using various key metrics such as F1 score, accuracy, precision and recall. Finally, we present a prototype use case, leveraging real-world file access data to assess the model’s impact on performance.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

On-Demand Column Joining for High Energy Physics

As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) transitions into the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) era, the volume of data to be processed is expected to increase significantly. The CMS Experiment currently utilizes various data formats, including AOD, MiniAOD, and NanoAOD, each with different levels of detail and storage requirements. This paper addresses the challenges of data duplication and storage inefficiencies in high-energy physics (HEP) analyses by proposing an on-demand column-joining solution. This approach aims to reduce data duplication by enabling the dynamic combination of NanoAOD data with auxiliary information from larger data tiers, such as MiniAOD. The proposed solution leverages Trino, a high-performance distributed SQL query engine, to perform efficient and scalable data joins. Benchmarks using CMS OpenData demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, showing that it can handle large datasets with low latency. Integration with the scikit-hep ecosystem and the coffea analysis framework is also discussed, highlighting the potential for seamless end-to-end data processing and analysis. Ongoing and future work focuses on expanding benchmarks, integrating ServiceX for data transformation, and exploring the use of native object storage solutions.

Manganelli, Nicholas [Northeastern U.]↗

Development and Validation of the Near-Miss Safety Score (NMSS) Framework for Heavy-Duty Vehicle Safety Assessment

Heavy-duty commercial vehicles present unique safety challenges due to their size, articulation dynamics, and operational complexity. As Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) become more common in Class 8 tractor-trailers, traditional crash-based metrics are no longer sufficient to evaluate safety performance. This study introduces the Near-Miss Safety Score (NMSS)—a quantitative, physics-informed framework developed as a leading indicator of safety for advanced commercial vehicle technologies. NMSS quantifies how close a vehicle or operator comes to a collision or safety-critical event by integrating vehicle kinematics (relative distance, velocity, and acceleration) with driver or system response latency and time-to-collision. A modifier function adjusts the base score for vehicle-specific and environmental factors such as trailer articulation, load distribution, braking condition, and roadway environment. The framework enables systematic evaluation of ADAS/ADS performance under a range of operational and degraded conditions. By capturing near-miss dynamics rather than relying on crash data, NMSS provides a proactive approach to risk assessment, accelerates technology validation, and enhances interpretability for regulators and fleet operators. The proposed NMSS was validated using data collected from a motorcoach platform, demonstrating the framework’s applicability to heavy-duty safety evaluation and performance benchmarking. Results and key insights are presented in this paper.

Siekmann, Adam [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000284653935)↗

SCOPE: Spectral cloud optical property estimation using real-time GOES-R longwave imagery

The output of ground-based, solar power generation systems is strongly dependent on cloud cover, which is the main contributor to solar power variability and uncertainty. Cloud optical properties are typically over-simplified in forecasting applications due to the lack of realtime, accurate estimates. In this work, we introduce a method, the Spectral Cloud Optical Property Estimation (SCOPE), for estimating cloud optical properties directly from high-resolution (5-min, 2 km) imagery from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R, which is the newest generation of the GOES system. The SCOPE method couples a two-stream, spectrally resolved radiative model with the longwave GOES-R sensor output to simultaneously estimate the cloud optical depth, cloud top height, and cloud thickness during both day and night at 5-min intervals. The accuracy of SCOPE is evaluated using one year (2018) of downwelling longwave (DLW) radiation measurements from the Surface Radiation Budget Network, which consists of seven sites spread across climatically diverse regions of the contiguous United States. During daytime clear-sky periods, SCOPE predicts DLW within instrument uncertainty (10 W m -2 ) for four of the seven locations, with the remaining locations yielding errors of the order of 11.2, 17.7, and 20.2 W m -2 . For daytime cloudy-sky, daytime all-sky (clear or cloudy), and nighttime all-sky periods, SCOPE achieves root mean square error values of 23.0–34.5 W m -2 for all seven locations. These results, together with the low-latency of the method (1 s per sample), show that SCOPE provides a viable solution to real-time, accurate estimation of cloud optical properties for both day and night.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Scalable molecular dynamics on CPU and GPU architectures with NAMD

NAMD is a molecular dynamics program designed for high-performance simulations of very large biological objects on CPU- and GPU-based architectures. NAMD offers scalable performance on petascale parallel supercomputers consisting of hundreds of thousands of cores, as well as on inexpensive commodity clusters commonly found in academic environments. It is written in C++ and leans on Charm++ parallel objects for optimal performance on low-latency architectures. NAMD is a versatile, multipurpose code that gathers state-of-the-art algorithms to carry out simulations in apt thermodynamic ensembles, using the widely popular CHARMM, AMBER, OPLS, and GROMOS biomolecular force fields. Here, we review the main features of NAMD that allow both equilibrium and enhanced-sampling molecular dynamics simulations with numerical efficiency. We describe the underlying concepts utilized by NAMD and their implementation, most notably for handling long-range electrostatics; controlling the temperature, pressure, and pH; applying external potentials on tailored grids; leveraging massively parallel resources in multiple-copy simulations; and hybrid quantum-mechanical/molecular-mechanical descriptions. We detail the variety of options offered by NAMD for enhanced-sampling simulations aimed at determining free-energy differences of either alchemical or geometrical transformations and outline their applicability to specific problems. Last, we discuss the roadmap for the development of NAMD and our current efforts toward achieving optimal performance on GPU-based architectures, for pushing back the limitations that have prevented biologically realistic billion-atom objects to be fruitfully simulated, and for making large-scale simulations less expensive and easier to set up, run, and analyze. NAMD is distributed free of charge with its source code at www.ks.uiuc.edu.

high-performance computing↗

A domain wall-magnetic tunnel junction artificial synapse with notched geometry for accurate and efficient training of deep neural networks

Inspired by the parallelism and efficiency of the brain, several candidates for artificial synapse devices have been developed for neuromorphic computing, yet a nonlinear and asymmetric synaptic response curve precludes their use for backpropagation, the foundation of modern supervised learning. Spintronic devices—which benefit from high endurance, low power consumption, low latency, and CMOS compatibility—are a promising technology for memory, and domain-wall magnetic tunnel junction (DW-MTJ) devices have been shown to implement synaptic functions such as long-term potentiation and spike-timing dependent plasticity. In this work, we propose a notched DW-MTJ synapse as a candidate for supervised learning. Using micromagnetic simulations at room temperature, we show that notched synapses ensure the non-volatility of the synaptic weight and allow for highly linear, symmetric, and reproducible weight updates using either spin transfer torque (STT) or spin–orbit torque (SOT) mechanisms of DW propagation. We use lookup tables constructed from micromagnetics simulations to model the training of neural networks built with DW-MTJ synapses on both the MNIST and Fashion-MNIST image classification tasks. Accounting for thermal noise and realistic process variations, the DW-MTJ devices achieve classification accuracy close to ideal floating-point updates using both STT and SOT devices at room temperature and at 400 K. Our work establishes the basis for a magnetic artificial synapse that can eventually lead to hardware neural networks with fully spintronic matrix operations implementing machine learning.

42 ENGINEERING↗

The QICK (Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit): Readout and control for qubits and detectors

We introduce a Xilinx RF System-on-Chip (RFSoC)-based qubit controller (called the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK for short), which supports the direct synthesis of control pulses with carrier frequencies of up to 6 GHz. The QICK can control multiple qubits or other quantum devices. The QICK consists of a digital board hosting an RFSoC field-programmable gate array, custom firmware, and software and an optional companion custom-designed analog front-end board. We characterize the analog performance of the system as well as its digital latency, important for quantum error correction and feedback protocols. We benchmark the controller by performing standard characterizations of a transmon qubit. We achieve an average gate fidelity of ℱ avg =99.93%. All of the schematics, firmware, and software are open-source.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Time-walk and jitter correction in SNSPDs at high count rates

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are a leading detector type for time correlated single photon counting, especially in the near-infrared. When operated at high count rates, SNSPDs exhibit increased timing jitter caused by internal device properties and features of the RF amplification chain. Variations in RF pulse height and shape lead to variations in the latency of timing measurements. To compensate for this, we demonstrate a calibration method that correlates delays in detection events with the time elapsed between pulses. The increase in jitter at high rates can be largely canceled in software by applying corrections derived from the calibration process. We demonstrate our method with a single-pixel tungsten silicide SNSPD and show it decreases high count rate jitter. The technique is especially effective at removing a long tail that appears in the instrument response function at high count rates. At a count rate of 11.4 MCounts/s, we reduce the full width at 1% maximum level (FW1%M) by 45%. The method, therefore, enables certain quantum communication protocols that are rate-limited by the FW1%M metric to operate almost twice as fast.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Complex decay dynamics of HIV virions, intact and defective proviruses, and 2LTR circles following initiation of antiretroviral therapy

In persons living with HIV-1 (PLWH) who start antiretroviral therapy (ART), plasma virus decays in a biphasic fashion to below the detection limit. The first phase reflects the short half-life (<1 d) of cells that produce most of the plasma virus. The second phase represents the slower turnover (t 1/2 = 14 d) of another infected cell population, whose identity is unclear. Using the intact proviral DNA assay (IPDA) to distinguish intact and defective proviruses, we analyzed viral decay in 17 PLWH initiating ART. Circulating CD4 + T cells with intact proviruses include few of the rapidly decaying first-phase cells. Instead, this population initially decays more slowly (t 1/2 = 12.9 d) in a process that largely represents death or exit from the circulation rather than transition to latency. This more protracted decay potentially allows for immune selection. After ~3 mo, the decay slope changes, and CD4 + T cells with intact proviruses decay with a half-life of 19 mo, which is still shorter than that of the latently infected cells that persist on long-term ART. Two-long-terminal repeat (2LTR) circles decay with fast and slow phases paralleling intact proviruses, a finding that precludes their use as a simple marker of ongoing viral replication. Proviruses with defects at the 5' or 3' end of the genome show equivalent monophasic decay at rates that vary among individuals. Understanding these complex early decay processes is important for correct use of reservoir assays and may provide insights into properties of surviving cells that can constitute the stable latent reservoir.

2LTR circles↗

Time-dependent SOLPS-ITER simulations of the tokamak plasma boundary for model predictive control using SINDy *

Abstract Time-dependent SOLPS-ITER simulations have been used to identify reduced models with the sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) method and develop model-predictive control of the boundary plasma state using main ion gas puff actuation. A series of gas actuation sequences are input into SOLPS-ITER to produce a dynamic response in upstream and divertor plasma quantities. The SINDy method is applied to identify reduced linear and nonlinear models for the electron density at the outboard midplane n e , s e p O M P and the electron temperature at the outer divertor T e , s e p d i v . Note that T e , s e p d i v is not necessarily the peak value of T e along the divertor. The identified reduced models are interpretable by construction (i.e. not black box), and have the form of coupled ordinary differential equations. Despite significant noise in T e , s e p d i v , the reduced models can be used to predict the response over a range of actuation levels to a maximum deviation of 0.5% in n e , s e p O M P and 5%–10% in T e , s e p d i v for the cases considered. Model retraining using time history data triggered by a preset error threshold is also demonstrated. A model predictive control strategy for nonlinear models is developed and used to perform feedback control of a SOLPS-ITER simulation to produce a setpoint trajectory in n e , s e p O M P using the integrated plasma simulator framework. The developed techniques are general and can be applied to time-dependent data from other boundary simulations or experimental data. Ongoing work is extending the approach to model identification and control for divertor detachment, which will present transient nonlinear behavior from impurity seeding, including realistic latency and synthetic diagnostic signals derived from the full SOLPS-ITER output.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Simulating Diverse HEP Workflows on Heterogeneous Architectures

We evaluate key patterns and estimate throughput bounds of simulated transformation of conventional high energy physics (HEP) data processing workflows to heterogeneous equivalents. The simulation parameter space includes the number of offloaded tasks, CPU/accelerator ratios of intra-task computations, offload latencies, and run time efficiency of offloaded computations. The simulation is performed for a diverse set of state-of-the-art event reconstruction scenarios from ATLAS, LHCb and CMS - the frontier HEP experiments of the Large Hadron Collider project.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Flexible visualization of a 3rd party Intrusion Prevention (Security) tool: A use case with the ELK stack

A difficult aspect of cyber security is the ability to achieve automated real time intrusion prevention across various sets of systems. To this extent, several companies are offering comprehensive solutions that leverage an "accuracy of scale" and moving much of the intelligence and detection on the Cloud, relying on an ever-growing set of data and analytics to increase decision accuracy. Often, they provide tools to visualize the decision workflows in attack prevention (as well as tune the algorithm) but those solutions are not always practical as companies see the problem as "global" that is, from a unified Cyber-security standpoint. However, a key to a successful Cyber-security program is transparency and trust: from an experimental team viewpoint, this specifically means having the ability to immediately see what and from where, who has been blocked and being able to inform the community in case of a revoked access without the need for filing a "ticket" (that may eventually be answered) – in other words, rapid response to their user-base is essential but solutions targeting "sub-groups" in an organization are not often available. We have come up with a versatile solution leveraging the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, & Kibana) and an IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) based WAF (Web Application Firewall) from Signal Sciences. Signal Science allows the streaming of detailed logs in a Logstash format suitable for custom solutions for visualization. By combining these two tools, we have strengthened our security posture and enabled individual experiments to monitor their own traffic. Specifically, the IPS WAF provides unique data such as country of origin, protocol, response code, source IP, and paths accessed. In this contribution, we will show how we engineered a visualization solution so experiment groups could access a dashboard with predefined graphs but also, where they can create individual customizable dashboards used to display blocked traffic and troubleshoot latency issues. We will discuss the details and procedures for developing and configuring these tools and how it benefits cyber security postures across our scientific based environment.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

100 Gb/s High Throughput Serial Protocol (HTSP) for data acquisition systems with interleaved streaming

Demands on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) data transport have been increasing over the years as frame sizes and refresh rates increase. As the bandwidths requirements increase the ability to implement data transport protocol layers using "soft" programmable logic becomes harder and start to require harden IP blocks implementation. To reduce the number of physical links and interconnects, it is common for data acquisition systems to require interleaving of streams on the same link (e.g. streaming data and streaming register access). Further, this paper presents a way to leverage existing FPGA harden IP blocks to achieve a robust, low latency 100 Gb/s point-to-point link with minimal programmable logic overhead geared towards the needs of data acquisition systems with interleaved streaming requirements.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Nanosecond machine learning regression with deep boosted decision trees in FPGA for high energy physics

We present a novel application of the machine learning / artificial intelligence method called boosted decision trees to estimate physical quantities on field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). The software package fwXmachina features a new architecture called parallel decision paths that allows for deep decision trees with arbitrary number of input variables. It also features a new optimization scheme to use different numbers of bits for each input variable, which produces optimal physics results and ultraefficient FPGA resource utilization. Problems in high energy physics of proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are considered. Estimation of missing transverse momentum (E T miss ) at the first level trigger system at the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) experiments, with a simplified detector modeled by Delphes, is used to benchmark and characterize the firmware performance. The firmware implementation with a maximum depth of up to 10 using eight input variables of 16-bit precision gives a latency value of $\mathcal{O}$(10) ns, independent of the clock speed, and $\mathcal{O}$(0.1)% of the available FPGA resources without using digital signal processors.

Instruments & Instrumentation↗