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At least 973 records · Page 54

Argonne Discovery Yields Self-Healing Diamond-Like Carbon

We report that large-scale reactive molecular dynamics simulations carried out on the US Department of Energy’s IBM Blue Gene/Q Mira supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, along with experiments conducted by researchers in Argonne’s Energy Systems Division, enabled the design of a “self-healing” anti-wear coating that drastically reduces friction and related degradation in engines and moving machinery. Now, the computational work advanced for this purpose is being used to identify the friction-fighting potential of other catalysts.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Illuminating the Universe's Ignition

This paper tells the story of how a research team based at the University of Texas at Austin used supercomputing resources at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory to create the first fully coupled simulation of the reionization of our universe's local group. The team's models helped researchers understand how reionization helped form the universe as we know it today, predict the impact of dwarf galaxies on reionization, and set the stage for simulating larger volumes of the universe in greater detail.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Cancer's Big Data Problem

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has partnered with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to use DOE supercomputers to aid in the fight against cancer by building sophisticated models based on data available at the population, patient, and molecular levels. Here, through a three-year pilot project called the Joint Design of Advanced Computing Solutions for Cancer (JDACSC), four participating national laboratories--Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge--will focus on three problems singled out by the NCI as the biggest bottlenecks to advancing cancer research.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Accelerating Scientific Applications With SambaNova Reconfigurable Dataflow Architecture

Here, our exploratory work finds that the SambaNova Reconfigurable Dataflow Architecture (RDA) along with the SambaFlow software stack provides for an attractive system and solution to accelerate AI for science workloads. We have observed the efficacy of using the system with a diverse set of science applications and reasoned their suitability for performance gains over traditional hardware. As the Data-Scale system provides for a very large memory capacity, the system can be used to train models that typically do not fit in a GPU. The architecture also provides for deeper integration with upcoming supercomputers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a US Department of Energy Office of Science user facility, to help advance science insights.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Analyzing large data sets from XGC1 magnetic fusion simulations using apache spark

Apache Spark is explored as a tool for analyzing large data sets from the magnetic fusion simulation code XGCI. Implementation details of Apache Spark on the NERSC Edison supercomputer are discussed, including binary file reading, and parameter setup. Here, an unsupervised machine learning algorithm, k-means clustering, is applied to XGCI particle distribution function data, showing that highly turbulent spatial regions do not have common coherent structures, but rather broad, ring-like structures in velocity space.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Timely Result-Data Offloading for Improved HPC Center Scratch Provisioning and Serviceability

Modern High-Performance Computing (HPC) centers are facing a data deluge from emerging scientific applications. Supporting large data entails a significant commitment of the highthroughput center storage system, scratch space. However, the scratch space is typically managed using simple purge policies, without sophisticated end-user data services to balance resource consumption and user serviceability. End-user data services such as offloading are performed using point-to-point transfers that are unable to reconcile center s purge and users delivery deadlines, unable to adapt to changing dynamics in the end-toend data path and are not fault-tolerant. Such inefficiencies can be prohibitive to sustaining high performance. In this paper, we address the above issues by designing a framework for the timely, decentralized offload of application result data. Our framework uses an overlay of user-specified intermediate and landmark sites to orchestrate a decentralized fault-tolerant delivery. We have implemented our techniques within a production job scheduler (PBS) and data transfer tool (BitTorrent). Our evaluation using both a real implementation and supercomputer job log-driven simulations show that: the offloading times can be significantly reduced (90.4% for a 5 GB data transfer); the exposure window can be minimized while also meeting center-user Service Level Agreements.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Exploring Properties and Correlations of Fatal Events in a Large-Scale HPC System

In this study, we explore potential correlations of fatal system events for one of the most powerful supercomputers-IBM Blue Gene/Q Mira, which is deployed at Argonne National Laboratory, based on its 5-year reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) log. Our contribution is two-fold. (1) We design an efficient log analysis tool, namely LogAider, with a novel filtering method to effectively extract fatal events from masses of system messages that are heavily duplicated in the log. LogAider exhibits a very precise detection of temporal-correlation with a high similarity (up to 95 percent) to the ground-truth (i.e., compared to the failure records reported by the administrators). The total number of fatal events can be reduced to about 1,255 compared with originally 2.6 million duplicated fatal messages. (2) We analyze the 5-year RAS log of the MIRA system using LogAider, and summarize six important "takeaways" which can help system vendors and administrators better understand an extreme-scale system's fatal events. Specifically, we find that the distribution or proportion of the fatal system events follow a Pareto-like principle in general. The temporal correlation among fatal events is much stronger than that of warn messages and info messages, and the correlated events tend to constitute a few clusters. The mean time between fatal events (MTBFE) of the Mira system is about 1.3 days from the perspective of the system, and the MTTI is 2-4 days from the perspective of users. The most error-prone item value with respect to any key attribute appears likely in the log every 2-10 days. Weibull, Gamma, and Pearson6 are the three best-fit distributions for the fatal event intervals. The overall correlation of fatal events on the 5D torus network is not prominent, whereas the small-region locality correlation (e.g., the fatal events inside racks) is relatively strong. We believe our work will be interesting to large-scale HPC system administrators and vendors and to fault tolerance researchers, enabling them to better understand fatal events and mitigate such events accordingly.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Development of a Stiffness-Based Chemistry Load Balancing Scheme, and Optimization of Input/Output and Communication, to Enable Massively Parallel High-Fidelity Internal Combustion Engine Simulations

A closed-cycle gasoline compression ignition engine simulation near top dead center (TDC) was used to profile the performance of a parallel commercial engine computational fluid dynamics code, as it was scaled on up to 4096 cores of an IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. The test case has 9 million cells near TDC, with a fixed mesh size of 0.15 mm, and was run on configurations ranging from 128 to 4096 cores. Profiling was done for a small duration of 0.11 crank angle degrees near TDC during ignition. Optimization of input/output performance resulted in a significant speedup in reading restart files, and in an over 100-times speedup in writing restart files and files for post-processing. Improvements to communication resulted in a 1400-times speedup in the mesh load balancing operation during initialization, on 4096 cores. An improved, “stiffness-based” algorithm for load balancing chemical kinetics calculations was developed, which results in an over 3-times faster run-time near ignition on 4096 cores relative to the original load balancing scheme. With this improvement to load balancing, the code achieves over 78% scaling efficiency on 2048 cores, and over 65% scaling efficiency on 4096 cores, relative to 256 cores.

CFD, Mira, Supercomputing, High Performance Comput↗

Optimal band selection for target detection with a LWIR multispectral imager

Multispectral imaging can offer many benefits in cost, complexity, resolution, size, weight, and power, relative to hyperspectral imaging. When designing a multispectral system, spectral bandpasses can be selected using optimization algorithms configured to maximally separate target detection scores between target and background regions. A hyperspectral image (HSI) can serve as the source of data from which band groupings can be tested for optimality. The output of an adaptive cosine estimator target detection algorithm is used in an objective function. Three optimization algorithms are compared: particle swarm, dual annealing, and differential evolution. A global optimum is also found using a brute force approach on the Livermore Computing Syrah supercomputer. Three materials are investigated: calcite, gypsum, and limestone. This is done for 3-, 4-, and 5-band systems. The data originate from a longwave infrared HSI of a material display board. The optimization algorithms were run 30 times for every scenario. Performance statistics (maximum, minimum, mean, standard deviation, and median) based on the separation values are given. Additional characterization was performed using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves and the area under the ROC curve. While good performance was obtained for the three optimization algorithms, the dual annealing algorithm produced the highest and most consistent detection separation scores on average.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Algorithm for solving the linear Cauchy problem for large systems of ordinary differential equations with the use of parallel computations

An algorithm for solving the linear Cauchy problem for large systems of ordinary differential equations is presented. The algorithm for systems of first-order differential equations is implemented in the EDELWEISS code with the possibility of parallel computations on supercomputers employing the MPI (Message Passing Interface) standard for the data exchange between parallel processes. The solution is represented by a series of orthogonal polynomials on the interval [0, 1]. The algorithm is characterized by simplicity and the possibility to solve nonlinear problems with a correction of the operator in accordance with the solution obtained in the previous iterative process.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Scalable direct Vlasov solver with discontinuous Galerkin method on unstructured mesh.

This paper presents the development of parallel direct Vlasov solvers with discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for beam and plasma simulations in four dimensions. Both physical and velocity spaces are in two dimesions (2P2V) with unstructured mesh. Contrary to the standard particle-in-cell (PIC) approach for kinetic space plasma simulations, i.e., solving Vlasov-Maxwell equations, direct method has been used in this paper. There are several benefits to solving a Vlasov equation directly, such as avoiding noise associated with a finite number of particles and the capability to capture fine structure in the plasma. The most challanging part of a direct Vlasov solver comes from higher dimensions, as the computational cost increases as N{sup 2d}, where d is the dimension of the physical space. Recently, due to the fast development of supercomputers, the possibility has become more realistic. Many efforts have been made to solve Vlasov equations in low dimensions before; now more interest has focused on higher dimensions. Different numerical methods have been tried so far, such as the finite difference method, Fourier Spectral method, finite volume method, and spectral element method. This paper is based on our previous efforts to use the DG method. The DG method has been proven to be very successful in solving Maxwell equations, and this paper is our first effort in applying the DG method to Vlasov equations. DG has shown several advantages, such as local mass matrix, strong stability, and easy parallelization. These are particularly suitable for Vlasov equations. Domain decomposition in high dimensions has been used for parallelization; these include a highly scalable parallel two-dimensional Poisson solver. Benchmark results have been shown and simulation results will be reported.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Automatic Parallelization of Numerical Python Applications using the Global Arrays Toolkit

Global Arrays is a software system from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that enables an efficient, portable, and parallel shared-memory programming interface to manipulate distributed dense arrays. The NumPy module is the de facto standard for numerical calculation in the Python programming language, a language whose use is growing rapidly in the scientific and engineering communities. NumPy provides a powerful N-dimensional array class as well as other scientific computing capabilities. However, like the majority of the core Python modules, NumPy is inherently serial. Using a combination of Global Arrays and NumPy, we have reimplemented NumPy as a distributed drop-in replacement called Global Arrays in NumPy (GAiN). Serial NumPy applications can become parallel, scalable GAiN applications with only minor source code changes. Scalability studies of several different GAiN applications will be presented showing the utility of developing serial NumPy codes which can later run on more capable clusters or supercomputers.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Scalable Cloning on Large-Scale GPU Platforms with Application to Time-Stepped Simulations on Grids

Cloning is a technique to efficiently simulate a tree of multiple what-if scenarios that are unraveled during the course of a base simulation. However, cloned execution is highly challenging to realize on large, distributed memory computing platforms, due to the dynamic nature of the computational load across clones, and due to the complex dependencies spanning the clone tree. In this paper, we present the conceptual simulation framework, algorithmic foundations, and runtime interface of CloneX, a new system we designed for scalable simulation cloning. It efficiently and dynamically creates whole logical copies of a dynamic tree of simulations across a large parallel system without full physical duplication of computation and memory. The performance of a prototype implementation executed on up to 1,024 graphical processing units of a supercomputing system has been evaluated with three benchmarks—heat diffusion, forest fire, and disease propagation models—delivering a speed up of over two orders of magnitude compared to replicated runs. Finally, the results demonstrate a significantly faster and scalable way to execute many what-if scenario ensembles of large simulations via cloning using the CloneX interface.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Disk Failure Dataset from the Campaign Storage System

This dataset consists of 1,389 disk (HDD) failure events collected from the Campaign storage system at LANL. The Campaign system supported various compute platforms throughout its lifespan, including Cielo, Fire, Ice, and notably, the Trinity supercomputer. Each recorded event includes its detection timestamp (in ISO 8601 format) and details such as its location within the storage system—rack, enclosure, and drive slot number. The data, spanning from May 4, 2021, to July 25, 2023 (2 years, 2 months, and 22 days), represents failure events from the terminal years of Campaign's operational period, accounting for 26% of its total operational time.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Using High Performance Computing to Understand Roles of Labile and Nonlabile U(VI) on Hanford 300 Area Plume Longevity

Evolution of a hexavalent uranium [U(VI)] plume at the Hanford 300 Area bordering the Columbia River is investigated to evaluate the roles of labile and nonlabile forms of U(VI) on the longevity of the plume. A high fidelity, three-dimensional, field-scale, reactive flow and transport model is used to represent the system. Richards equation coupled to multicomponent reactive transport equations are solved for times up to 100 years taking into account rapid fluctuations in the Columbia River stage resulting in pulse releases of U(VI) into the river. The peta-scale computer code PFLOTRAN developed under a DOE SciDAC-2 project is employed in the simulations and executed on ORNL's Cray XT5 supercomputer Jaguar. Labile U(VI) is represented in the model through surface complexation reactions and its nonlabile form through dissolution of metatorbernite used as a surrogate mineral. Initial conditions are constructed corresponding to the U(VI) plume already in place to avoid uncertainties associated with the lack of historical data for the waste stream. The cumulative U(VI) flux into the river is compared for cases of equilibrium and multirate sorption models and for no sorption. The sensitivity of the U(VI) flux into the river on the initial plume configuration is investigated. The presence of nonlabile U(VI) was found to be essential in explaining the longevity of the U(VI) plume and the prolonged high U(VI) concentrations at the site exceeding the EPA MCL for uranium.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

High-efficiency high-energy Ka source for the critically-required maximum illumination of x-ray optics on Z using Z-petawatt-driven laser-breakout-afterburner accelerated ultrarelativistic electrons LDRD .

Under the auspices of the Science of Extreme Environments LDRD program, a <2 year theoretical- and computational-physics study was performed (LDRD Project 130805) by Guy R Bennett (formally in Center-01600) and Adam B. Sefkow (Center-01600): To investigate novel target designs by which a short-pulse, PW-class beam could create a brighter K{alpha} x-ray source than by simple, direct-laser-irradiation of a flat foil; Direct-Foil-Irradiation (DFI). The computational studies - which are still ongoing at this writing - were performed primarily on the RedStorm supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratories Albuquerque site. The motivation for a higher efficiency K{alpha} emitter was very clear: as the backlighter flux for any x-ray imaging technique on the Z accelerator increases, the signal-to-noise and signal-to-background ratios improve. This ultimately allows the imaging system to reach its full quantitative potential as a diagnostic. Depending on the particular application/experiment this would imply, for example, that the system would have reached its full design spatial resolution and thus the capability to see features that might otherwise be indiscernible with a traditional DFI-like x-ray source. This LDRD began FY09 and ended FY10.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Improved Transport Processes for CCSM

In atmospheric modeling, global spectral methods have dominated weather and climate simulation for the past two decades. However, global methods based upon the spherical harmonic basis functions require expensive non-local communication and thus have difficulty in exploiting the full potential of current high-performance parallel computers. The primary objective of HOMME ((11)) is the development of a class of high-order scalable conservative atmospheric models for climate and general atmospheric modeling applications. The spatial discretizations are based on continuous Galerkin (spectral element method) and discontinuous Galerkin (DG). These are local methods based on high-order accurate spectral basis functions which have been shown to perform well on massively parallel supercomputers at any resolution (18). HOMME employs a cubed-sphere geometry (26) exhibiting none of the singularities present in conventional latitude-longitude spherical geometries. The element based formulation enables the use of general curvilinear geometries and adaptive conforming or non-conforming meshes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗