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At least 109 records · Page 6

SLoG: Large-Scale Logging Middleware for HPC and Big Data Convergence

Cloud developers traditionally rely on purpose-specific services to provide the storage model they need for an application. In contrast, HPC developers have a much more limited choice, typically restricted to a centralized parallel file system for persistent storage. Unfortunately, these systems often offer low performance when subject to highly concurrent, conflicting I/O patterns. This makes difficult the implementation of inherently concurrent data structures such as distributed shared logs. Yet, this data structure is key to applications such as computational steering, data collection from physical sensor grids, or discrete event generators. In this paper we tackle this issue. We present SLoG, shared log middleware providing a shared log abstraction over a parallel file system, designed to circumvent the aforementioned limitations. We evaluate SLoG’s design on up to 100,000 cores of the Theta supercomputer: the results show high append velocity at scale while also providing substantial benefits for other persistent backend storage systems.

big data↗

Querying databases of trajectories of differential equations 2: Index functions

Suppose that a large number of parameterized trajectories (gamma) of a dynamical system evolving in R sup N are stored in a database. Let eta is contained R sup N denote a parameterized path in Euclidean space, and let parallel to center dot parallel to denote a norm on the space of paths. A data structures and indices for trajectories are defined and algorithms are given to answer queries of the following forms: Query 1. Given a path eta, determine whether eta occurs as a subtrajectory of any trajectory gamma from the database. If so, return the trajectory; otherwise, return null. Query 2. Given a path eta, return the trajectory gamma from the database which minimizes the norm parallel to eta - gamma parallel.

Grossman, Robert↗

Dynamic object management for distributed data structures

In distributed-memory multiprocessors, remote memory accesses incur larger delays than local accesses. Hence, insightful allocation and access of distributed data can yield substantial performance gains. The authors argue for the use of dynamic data management policies encapsulated within individual distributed data structures. Distributed data structures offer performance, flexibility, abstraction, and system independence. This approach is supported by data from a trace-driven simulation study of parallel scientific benchmarks. Experimental data on memory locality, message count, message volume, and communication delay suggest that data-structure-specific data management is superior to a single, system-imposed policy.

Totty, Brian K.↗

Execution environment for intelligent real-time control systems

Modern telerobot control technology requires the integration of symbolic and non-symbolic programming techniques, different models of parallel computations, and various programming paradigms. The Multigraph Architecture, which has been developed for the implementation of intelligent real-time control systems is described. The layered architecture includes specific computational models, integrated execution environment and various high-level tools. A special feature of the architecture is the tight coupling between the symbolic and non-symbolic computations. It supports not only a data interface, but also the integration of the control structures in a parallel computing environment.

Sztipanovits, Janos↗

Damage Detection in Composite Structures with Wavenumber Array Data Processing

Guided ultrasonic waves (GUW) have the potential to be an efficient and cost-effective method for rapid damage detection and quantification of large structures. Attractive features include sensitivity to a variety of damage types and the capability of traveling relatively long distances. They have proven to be an efficient approach for crack detection and localization in isotropic materials. However, techniques must be pushed beyond isotropic materials in order to be valid for composite aircraft components. This paper presents our study on GUW propagation and interaction with delamination damage in composite structures using wavenumber array data processing, together with advanced wave propagation simulations. Parallel elastodynamic finite integration technique (EFIT) is used for the example simulations. Multi-dimensional Fourier transform is used to convert time-space wavefield data into frequency-wavenumber domain. Wave propagation in the wavenumber-frequency domain shows clear distinction among the guided wave modes that are present. This allows for extracting a guided wave mode through filtering and reconstruction techniques. Presence of delamination causes spectral change accordingly. Results from 3D CFRP guided wave simulations with delamination damage in flat-plate specimens are used for wave interaction with structural defect study.

Tian, Zhenhua↗

PaKman: Scalable Assembly of Large Genomes on Distributed Memory Machines

De novo genome assembly is a fundamental problem in the field of bioinformatics, that aims to assemble the DNA sequence of an unknown genome from numerous short DNA fragments (aka reads) obtained from it. With the advent of high-throughput sequencing technologies, billions of reads can be generated in a matter of hours, necessitating efficient parallelization of the assembly process. While multiple parallel solutions have been proposed in the past, conducting a large- scale assembly at scale remains a challenging problem because of the inherent complexities associated with data movement, and irregular access footprints of memory and I/O operations. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm, called PaKman, to address the problem of performing large-scale genome assemblies on a distributed memory parallel computer. Our approach focuses on improving performance through a combination of novel data structures and algorithmic strategies for reducing the communication and I/O footprint during the assembly process. A key aspect of our algorithm is its graph data structure, which comprises fat nodes (or what we call "macro-nodes") that reduce the communication burden during contig generation. We present an extensive performance and qualitative evaluation of our algorithm, including comparisons to other state-of-the-art parallel assemblers. Our results demonstrate the ability to achieve near-linear speedups on up to 8K cores (tested); outperform state-of-the-art distributed memory and shared memory tools in performance while delivering comparable (if not better) quality; and reduce time to solution significantly. For instance, PaKman is able to complete an assembly of the full human genome in just over a minute on 8K cores.

Ghosh, Priyanka↗

Langmuir Probe Measurements in an Inductively Coupled GEC Reference Cell Plasma

Measurements of electron number density, electron temperature, and electron energy distribution function (EEDF) using a compensated Langmuir probe have been performed on an inductively (transformer ) coupled Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC) reference cell plasma. The plasma source is operated with CH4, CF4, or their mixtures with argon. The effect of independently driving the electrode supporting the wafer on the probe data is studied. In particular, we find that the plasma structure depends on the phase in addition to the magnitude of the power coupled to the electrode relative to that of the transformer coil. The Langmuir probe is translated in a plane parallel to the electrode to investigate the spatial structure of the plasma. The probe data is also compared with fluid model predictions.

Ji, J. S.↗

Camellia: A Rapid Development Framework for Finite Element Solvers

We report the discontinuous Petrov–Galerkin (DPG) methodology of Demkowicz and Gopalakrishnan guarantees the optimality of the finite element solution in a user-controllable energy norm, and provides several features supporting adaptive schemes. The approach provides stability automatically; there is no need for carefully derived numerical fluxes (as in DG schemes) or for mesh-dependent stabilization terms (as in stabilized methods). In this paper, we focus on features of Camellia that facilitate implementation of new DPG formulations; chief among these is a rich set of features in support of symbolic manipulation, which allow, e.g., bilinear formulations in the code to appear much as they would on paper. Many of these features are general in the sense that they can also be used in the implementation of other finite element formulations. In fact, because DPG’s requirements are essentially a superset of those of other finite element methods, Camellia provides built-in support for most common methods. We believe, however, that the combination of an essentially “hands-free” finite element methodology as found in DPG with the rapid development features of Camellia are particularly winsome, so we focus on use cases in this class. In addition to the symbolic manipulation features mentioned above, Camellia offers support for one-irregular adaptive meshes in 1D, 2D, 3D, and space-time. It provides a geometric multigrid preconditioner particularly suited for DPG problems, and supports distributed parallel execution using MPI. For its load balancing and distributed data structures, Camellia relies on packages from the Trilinos project, which simplifies interfacing with other computational science packages. Camellia also allows loading of standard mesh formats through an interface with the MOAB package. Camellia includes support for static condensation to eliminate element-interior degrees of freedom locally, usually resulting in substantial reduction of the cost of the global problem. Finally, we include a discussion of the variational formulations built into Camellia, with references to those formulations in the literature, as well as an MPI performance study.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The Shuttle inertial system

The Space Shuttle inertial system is built around a sensor assembly called the inertial measurement unit (IMU). The system includes a redundant set of three structurally integrated IMU's that operate in conjunction with parallel strung data system computers to provide precise attitude and velocity information to user system functions. The inertial system is actually a separate subsystem function integrated into the overall avionics system. Software resident in the system computers is the final link in the inertial system. The inertial software is comprised of two major sets, including a subsystem operating program (SOP) called the IMU SOP and redundancy management. Attention is given to system applications, systems performance, attitude sensitivities, the IMU platform, IMU thermal management, aspects of IMU calibration, and Shuttle program experience.

Swingle, W. L.↗

Lowering and Runtime Support for Fortran’s Multi-Image Parallel Features using LLVM Flang, PRIF, and Caffeine

This paper provides an overview of the multi-image parallel features in Fortran 2023 and their implementation in the LLVM flang compiler and the Caffeine parallel runtime library. The features of interest support a Single-Program, Multiple-Data (SPMD) programming model based on executing multiple “images”, each of which is a program instance. The features also support a Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) in the form of “coarray” distributed data structures. The paper discusses the lowering of multi-image features to the Parallel Runtime Interface for Fortran (PRIF) and the implementation of PRIF in the Caffeine parallel runtime library. This paper also provides an early view into the design of a new multi-image dialect of the LLVM Multi-Level Intermediate Representation (MLIR). We describe validation and testing of the resulting software stack, and demonstrate that performance compares favorably to another open-source compiler and runtime library: GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) gfortran and OpenCoarrays, respectively.

Bonachea, Dan↗

By Hand or Not By-Hand: A Case Study of Alternative Approaches to Parallelize CFD Applications

While parallel processing promises to speed up applications by several orders of magnitude, the performance achieved still depends upon several factors, including the multiprocessor architecture, system software, data distribution and alignment, as well as the methods used for partitioning the application and mapping its components onto the architecture. The existence of the Gorden Bell Prize given out at Supercomputing every year suggests that while good performance can be attained for real applications on general purpose multiprocessors, the large investment in man-power and time still has to be repeated for each application-machine combination. As applications and machine architectures become more complex, the cost and time-delays for obtaining performance by hand will become prohibitive. Computer users today can turn to three possible avenues for help: parallel libraries, parallel languages and compilers, interactive parallelization tools. The success of these methodologies, in turn, depends on proper application of data dependency analysis, program structure recognition and transformation, performance prediction as well as exploitation of user supplied knowledge. NASA has been developing multidisciplinary applications on highly parallel architectures under the High Performance Computing and Communications Program. Over the past six years, the transition of underlying hardware and system software have forced the scientists to spend a large effort to migrate and recede their applications. Various attempts to exploit software tools to automate the parallelization process have not produced favorable results. In this paper, we report our most recent experience with CAPTOOL, a package developed at Greenwich University. We have chosen CAPTOOL for three reasons: 1. CAPTOOL accepts a FORTRAN 77 program as input. This suggests its potential applicability to a large collection of legacy codes currently in use. 2. CAPTOOL employs domain decomposition to obtain parallelism. Although the fact that not all kinds of parallelism are handled may seem unappealing, many NASA applications in computational aerosciences as well as earth and space sciences are amenable to domain decomposition. 3. CAPTOOL generates code for a large variety of environments employed across NASA centers: MPI/PVM on network of workstations to the IBS/SP2 and CRAY/T3D.

Yan, Jerry C.↗

Parallel variable-band Choleski solvers for computational structural analysis applications on vector multiprocessor supercomputers

A Choleski method used to solve linear systems of equations that arise in large scale structural analyses is described. The method uses a novel variable-band storage scheme and is structured to exploit fast local memory caches while minimizing data access delays between main memory and vector registers. Several parallel implementations of this method are described for the CRAY-2 and CRAY Y-MP computers demonstrating the use of microtasking and autotasking directives. A portable parallel language, FORCE, is also used for two different parallel implementations, demonstrating the use of CRAY macrotasking. Results are presented comparing the matrix factorization times for three representative structural analysis problems from runs made in both dedicated and multi-user modes on both the CRAY-2 and CRAY Y-MP computers. CPU and wall clock timings are given for the various parallel methods and are compared to single processor timings of the same algorithm. Computation rates over 1 GIGAFLOP (1 billion floating point operations per second) on a four processor CRAY-2 and over 2 GIGAFLOPS on an eight processor CRAY Y-MP are demonstrated as measured by wall clock time in a dedicated environment. Reduced wall clock times for the parallel methods relative to the single processor implementation of the same Choleski algorithm are also demonstrated for runs made in multi-user mode.

Poole, E. L.↗

The parallelism motifs of genomic data analysis

Genomic datasets are growing dramatically as the cost of sequencing continues to decline and small sequencing devices become available. Enormous community databases store and share these data with the research community, but some of these genomic data analysis problems require large-scale computational platforms to meet both the memory and computational requirements. These applications differ from scientific simulations that dominate the workload on high-end parallel systems today and place different requirements on programming support, software libraries and parallel architectural design. For example, they involve irregular communication patterns such as asynchronous updates to shared data structures. We consider several problems in high-performance genomics analysis, including alignment, profiling, clustering and assembly for both single genomes and metagenomes. We identify some of the common computational patterns or ‘motifs’ that help inform parallelization strategies and compare our motifs to some of the established lists, arguing that at least two key patterns, sorting and hashing, are missing. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Numerical algorithms for high-performance computational science’.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Pele: An Exascale-Ready Suite of Combustion Codes

High fidelity simulations of realistic combustion devices are extremely demanding computationally because of the requirements to capture complex fuel chemical decomposition, its intricate interactions with turbulent, often multiphase, flows, and the wide separation of space and time scales between the thin flame and the device boundaries. Software required to carry out such computations tends to be extremely complex, particularly when designed to exploit hardware accelerators, and can be difficult to port and maintain. We present Pele, a performance portable suite of tools for the simulation of combustion systems, including codes to evolve reactive multiphase configurations in the low Mach number and compressible flow regimes, along with a set of inter-compatible post processing and in situ analysis tools. The Pele suite of tools is built on top of the AMReX framework for block-structured adaptive mesh refinement, which provides efficient data structures and algorithms that enable the development of a wide variety of efficient mesh and particle based PDE integration schemes. A hierarchical MPI+X parallelism scheme supports CPU-only and accelerated architectures, where X can be OpenMP, CUDA, and HIP based approaches for intra-node computational work distribution. The algorithms and data structures underlying the Pele simulation and analysis tools are highly scalable and performant across a wide variety of high-performance computing platforms, including DOEs newest exascale-class machines, Frontier and Aurora. The simulation and analysis tools are fully documented and freely distributed as open source via GitHub. We present key algorithmic and software challenges, solution strategies, performance and resulting set of capabilities.

AMReX↗

Crystal structure of perfluorononanoic acid, C 9 HF 17 O 2

The crystal structure of perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) was solved via parallel tempering using synchrotron powder diffraction data obtained from the Brockhouse X-ray Diffraction and Scattering (BXDS) Wiggler Lower Energy (WLE) beamline at the Canadian Light Source. PFNA crystallizes in monoclinic space group P2 1 /c (#14) with lattice parameters a = 26.172(1) Å, b = 5.6345(2) Å, c = 10.9501(4) Å, and β = 98.752(2)°. The crystal structure is composed of dimers, with pairs of PFNA molecules connected by hydrogen bonds via the carboxylic acid functional groups. The Rietveld-refined structure was compared to a density functional theory-optimized structure, and the root-mean-square Cartesian difference was larger than normally observed for correct powder structures. The powder data likely exhibited evidence of disorder which was not successfully modeled.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

A programmable shared-memory system for an array of processing-in-memory devices

Processing in memory (PIM), the concept of integrating processing directly with memory has been attracting a lot of attention, since PIM can assist in overcoming the throughput limitation caused by data movement between CPU and memory. The challenge, however, is that it requires the programmers to have a deep understanding of the PIM architecture to maximize the benefits such as data locality and parallel thread execution on multiple PIM devices. In this study, we present AnalyzeThat, a programmable shared-memory system for parallel data processing with PIM devices. Thematic to AnalyzeThat is a rich PIM-aware data structure (PADS), which is an encapsulation that integrally ties together the data, the analysis tasks and the runtime needed to interface with the PIM device array. The PADS abstraction provides (i) a sophisticated key-value data container that allows programmers to easily store data on multiple PIMs, (ii) a suite of parallel operations with which users can easily implement data analysis applications, and (iii) a runtime, hidden to programmers, which provides the mechanisms needed to overlay both the data and the tasks on the PIM device array in an intelligent fashion, based on PIM-specific information collected from the hardware. We have developed a PIM emulation framework called AnalyzeThat. In conclusion, our experimental evaluation with representative data analytics applications suggests that the proposed system can significantly reduce the PIM programming effort without losing its technology benefits.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Uranium (VI) Adsorbate Structures on Portlandite [Ca(OH)2] Type Surfaces Determined by Computational Modelling and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy

Portlandite [Ca(OH) 2 ] is a potentially dominant solid phase in the high pH fluids expected within the cementitious engineered barriers of Geological Disposal Facilities (GDF). This study combined X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy with computational modelling in order to provide atomic-scale data which improves our understanding of how a critically important radionuclide (U) will be adsorbed onto this phase under conditions relevant to a GDF environment. Such data are fundamental for predicting radionuclide mass transfer. Surface coordination chemistry and speciation of uranium with portlandite [Ca(OH) 2 ] under alkaline groundwater conditions (ca. pH 12) were determined by both in situ and ex situ grazing incidence extended X-ray absorption fine structure analysis (EXAFS) and by computational modelling at the atomic level. Free energies of sorption of aqueous uranyl hydroxides, [UO 2 (OH) n ] 2–n (n = 0–5) with the (001), (100) and (203) or (101) surfaces of portlandite are predicted from the potential of mean force using classical molecular umbrella sampling simulation methods and the structural interactions are further explored using fully periodic density functional theory computations. Although uranyl is predicted to only weakly adsorb to the (001) and (100) clean surfaces, there should be significantly stronger interactions with the (203/101) surface or at hydroxyl vacancies, both prevalent under groundwater conditions. The uranyl surface complex is typically found to include four equatorially coordinated hydroxyl ligands, forming an inner-sphere sorbate by direct interaction of a uranyl oxygen with surface calcium ions in both the (001) and (203/101) cases. In contrast, on the (100) surface, uranyl is sorbed with its axis more parallel to the surface plane. The EXAFS data are largely consistent with a surface structural layer or film similar to calcium uranate, but also show distinct uranyl characteristics, with the uranyl ion exhibiting the classic dioxygenyl oxygens at 1.8 Å and between four and five equatorial oxygen atoms at distances between 2.28 and 2.35 Å from the central U absorber. These experimental data are wholly consistent with the adsorbate configuration predicted by the computational models. These findings suggest that, under the strongly alkaline conditions of a cementitious backfill engineered barrier, there would be significant uptake of uranyl by portlandite to inhibit the mobility of U(VI) from the near field of a geological disposal facility.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗