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At least 1,279 records · Page 71

A parallel hierarchical blocked adaptive cross approximation algorithm

This article presents a low-rank decomposition algorithm based on subsampling of matrix entries. The proposed algorithm first computes rank-revealing decompositions of submatrices with a blocked adaptive cross approximation (BACA) algorithm, and then applies a hierarchical merge operation via truncated singular value decompositions (H-BACA). The proposed algorithm significantly improves the convergence of the baseline ACA algorithm and achieves reduced computational complexity compared to the traditional decompositions such as rank-revealing QR. Numerical results demonstrate the efficiency, accuracy, and parallel scalability of the proposed algorithm.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Distributed-Memory Sparse Deep Neural Network Inference Using Global Arrays

Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) models exhibit tremendous promise in developing efficient and productive distributed-memory parallel applications. They have been used extensively in scientific computations due to conveniently offering a ``shared-memory''-like model and convenient interfaces that separate communication with synchronization. Traditionally, PGAS communication models have been applied to dense/contiguously distributed data, but most modern applications depict varied levels of sparsity. Existing PGAS models require certain adaptations to support distributed sparse computations, since associated computations often require matrix arithmetic, in addition to data movement. The Global Arrays toolkit from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is one of the earliest PGAS models to combine one-sided data communication and distributed matrix operations and is still used in the popular NWChem quantum chemistry suite. Recently, we have expanded the Global Arrays toolkit to support common sparse operations, like sparse matrix-dense matrix multiplies (SpMM), sparse matrix-sparse matrix multiplication (SpGEMM) and Sampled Dense-Dense Matrix Multiplication (SDDMM). As it turns out, these operations are the bedrock of sparse Deep Learning (DL); sparse deep neural networks and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have gained increasing attention recently in achieving speedups on training and inference with reduced memory footprints. Unlike scientific applications in High Performance Computing (HPC), modern (distributed-memory capable) DL toolkits often rely on non-standardized and closed-source vendor software optimizations, creating challenges in software-hardware co-design at scale. Our goal is to support a variety of distributed-memory sparse matrix operations and helper functions in the newly created Sparse Global Arrays (SGA), such that it is possible to build portable and productive Machine Learning scenarios for algorithm/software and hardware codesign purposes. Contemporary data-parallel schemes for training/inference are undergoing a major overhaul since model replication limits scalability and causes resource inefficiencies. As such, we have adopted tensor parallelism in decomposing the model and inputs, to mitigate memory issues. Current implementation is built on top of MPI and uses CPUs to maximize the portability across the platforms.

Distributed computing, machine learning↗

AutoSIM

AutoSIM enables several instances of an executable to run in parallel on a directory of input files and consolidate results, at scale on the world's fastest supercomputers. The software accomplishes this by balancing compression, transmission, and computation of input files, executables, and output files to allow scalable parallel runs of any executable. The software breaks-up simulations into a configurable number of "churns" or sequential instances of executable invocations on a configurable number of cores/node. It sends the executable, supporting files, and appropriate number of input files to each node for independent execution, and then transfers the executable results to a shared disk for post-processing analysis. This MPI-based code has been demonstrated using EnergyPlus, DOE's flagship whole-building simulation engine, but was architected to allow scalable runtime of any software for any application (e.g. sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification). The code has also been demonstrated to scale on the Titan supercomputer using 131,072 processors to run 524,288 EnergyPlus annual simulations, and write 45TB of data to disk in 68 mins 08 secs.

New, Joshua R↗

HyperSpace: Distributed Bayesian Hyperparameter Optimization

As machine learning models continue to increase in complexity, so does the potential number of free model parameters commonly known as hyperparameters. While there has been considerable progress toward finding optimal configurations of these hyperparameters, many optimization procedures are treated as black boxes. We believe optimization methods should not only return a set of optimized hyperparameters, but also give insight into the effects of model hyperparameter settings. To this end, we present HyperSpace, a parallel implementation of Bayesian sequential model-based optimization. HyperSpace leverages high performance computing (HPC) resources to better understand unknown, potentially non-convex hyperparameter search spaces. We show that it is possible to learn the dependencies between model hyperparameters through the optimization process. By partitioning large search spaces and running many optimization procedures in parallel, we also show that it is possible to discover families of good hyperparameter settings over a variety of models including unsupervised clustering, regression, and classification tasks.

Computer Science↗

Monte Carlo explicitly correlated second-order many-body perturbation theory

A stochastic algorithm is proposed and implemented that computes a basis-set-incompleteness (F12) correction to an ab initio second-order many-body perturbation energy as a short sum of 6- to 15-dimensional integrals of Gaussian-type orbitals, an explicit function of the electron-electron distance (geminal), and its associated excitation amplitudes held fixed at the values suggested by Ten-no. The integrals are directly evaluated (without a resolution-of-the-identity approximation or an auxiliary basis set) by the Metropolis Monte Carlo method. Applications of this method to 17 molecular correlation energies and 12 gas-phase reaction energies reveal that both the nonvariational and variational formulas for the correction give reliable correlation energies (98% or higher) and reaction energies (within 2 kJ mol -1 with a smaller statistical uncertainty) near the complete-basis-set limits by using just the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set. The nonvariational formula is found to be 2–10 times less expensive to evaluate than the variational one, though the latter yields energies that are bounded from below and is, therefore, slightly but systematically more accurate for energy differences. Being capable of using virtually any geminal form, the method confirms the best overall performance of the Slater-type geminal among 6 forms satisfying the same cusp conditions. Lastly, not having to precompute lower-dimensional integrals analytically, to store them on disk, or to transform them in a nonscalable dense-matrix-multiplication algorithm, the method scales favorably with both system size and computer size; the cost increases only as O(n 4 ) with the number of orbitals (n), and its parallel efficiency reaches 99.9% of the ideal case on going from 16 to 4096 computer processors.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Steady-State Calibration of a Diesel Engine in Computational Fluid Dynamics Using a Graphical Processing Unit-Based Chemistry Solver

The prospect of analysis-driven precalibration of a modern diesel engine is extremely valuable in order to significantly reduce hardware investments and accelerate engine designs compliant with stricter fuel economy regulations. Advanced modeling tools, such as CFD, are often used with the goal of streamlining significant portions of the calibration process. The success of the methodology largely relies on the accuracy of analytical predictions, especially engine-out emissions. However, the effectiveness of CFD simulation tools for in-cylinder engine combustion is often compromised by the complexity, accuracy, and computational overhead of detailed chemical kinetics necessary for combustion calculations. The standard approach has been to use skeletal kinetic mechanisms (~50 species), which consume acceptable computational time but with degraded accuracy. In this work, a comprehensive demonstration and validation of the analytical precalibration process is presented for a passenger car diesel engine using CFD simulations and a graphical processing unit (GPU)-based chemical kinetics solver (Zero-RK, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA) on high performance computing resources to enable the use of detailed kinetic mechanisms. Diesel engine combustion computations have been conducted over 600 operating points spanning in-vehicle speed-load map, using massively parallel ensemble simulation sets on the Titan supercomputer located at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. The results with different mesh resolutions have been analyzed to compare differences in combustion and emissions (NOx, carbon monoxide CO, unburned hydrocarbons (UHC), and smoke) with actual engine measurements. The results show improved agreement in combustion and NOx predictions with a large n-heptane mechanism consisting of 144 species and 900 reactions with refined mesh resolution; however, agreement in CO, UHC, and smoke remains a challenge.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Steady-State Calibration of a Diesel Engine in CFD Using a GPU-Based Chemistry Solver

The prospect of analysis-driven pre-calibration of a modern diesel engine is extremely valuable in order to significantly reduce hardware investments and accelerate engine designs compliant with stricter EPA fuel economy regulations. Advanced modeling tools, such as CFD, are often used with the goal of streamlining significant portions of the calibration process. The success of the methodology largely relies on the accuracy of analytical predictions, especially engine-out emissions. However, the effectiveness of CFD simulation tools for in-cylinder engine combustion is often compromised by the complexity, accuracy, and computational overhead of detailed chemical kinetics necessary for combustion calculations. The standard approach has been to use skeletal kinetic mechanisms (~50 species) which consume acceptable computational time but with degraded accuracy.In this work, a comprehensive demonstration and validation of the analytical pre-calibration process is presented for a passenger car diesel engine using CFD simulations with CONVERGE™ and a GPU-based chemical kinetics solver (Zero-RK, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) on high performance computing resources to enable the use of detailed kinetic mechanisms. Diesel engine combustion computations have been conducted over 600 operating points spanning in-vehicle speed-load map, using massively parallel ensemble simulation sets on the Titan supercomputer located at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. The results with different mesh resolutions have been analyzed to compare differences in combustion and emissions (NO x , Carbon Monoxide CO, Unburned Hydrocarbons UHC, and Smoke) with actual engine measurements. The results show improved agreement in combustion and NO x predictions with a large n-heptane mechanism consisting of 144 species and 900 reactions with refined mesh resolution; however; agreement in CO, UHC and Smoke remain a challenge.

Gao, Jian↗

Efficient Distributed Sequence Parallelism for Transformer-Based Image Segmentation

We introduce an efficient distributed sequence parallel approach for training transformer-based deep learning image segmentation models. The neural network models are comprised of a combination of a Vision Transformer encoder with a convolutional decoder to provide image segmentation mappings. The utility of the distributed sequence parallel approach is especially useful in cases where the tokenized embedding representation of image data are too large to fit into standard computing hardware memory. To demonstrate the performance and characteristics of our models trained in sequence parallel fashion compared to standard models, we evaluate our approach using a 3D MRI brain tumor segmentation dataset. We show that training with a sequence parallel approach can match standard sequential model training in terms of convergence. Furthermore, we show that our sequence parallel approach has the capability to support training of models that would not be possible on standard computing resources.

Lyngaas, Isaac↗

Operational experience and R&D results using the Google Cloud for High-Energy Physics in the ATLAS experiment

The ATLAS experiment at CERN relies on a Worldwide Distributed Computing Grid infrastructure to support its physics program at the Large Hadron Collider. ATLAS has integrated cloud computing resources to complement its Grid infrastructure and conducted an R&D program on Google Cloud Platform. These initiatives leverage key features of commercial cloud providers: lightweight configuration and operation, elasticity and availability of diverse infrastructures. Here this paper examines the seamless integration of cloud computing services as a conventional Grid site within the ATLAS workflow management and data management systems, while also offering new setups for interactive, parallel analysis. It underscores pivotal results that enhance the on-site computing model and outlines several R&D projects that have benefited from large-scale, elastic resource provisioning models. Furthermore, this study discusses the impact of cloud-enabled R&D projects in three domains: accelerators and AI/ML, ARM CPUs and columnar data analysis techniques.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

kynema-fmb [SWR-23-07]

Kynema-FMB (FKA: Kynema) is an open-source performance portable flexible multibody (FMB) dynamics solver designed for time-domain simulations. While originally tailored for wind turbine structural dynamics, the formulation and implementation are those of a general flexible-multidbody dynamics solver that can readily be applied to a wide range of systems. Kynema was designed with a narrow focus, namely to provide a lightweight, fast, accurate FMD solver for coupling to computational-fluid-dynamics (CFD) codes, especially the CFD codes in the Kynema suite, for fluid-structure-interaction (FSI) simulations. Kynema-FMB is equipped to model systems that can be represented as a collection of beams and rigid bodies that are connected through constraints. Degrees of freedom are defined in the inertial/global frame of reference and include displacements and rotations (formally as rotation matrices, but stored as quaternions). The underlying formulation is built on a Lie-group time integrator designed for index-3 differential-algebraic equations, which is second-order accurate in time (Bruls et al., 2012). Beam models are based on geometrically exact beam theory and are discretized as high-order spectral finite elements similar to those in BeamDyn (Wang et al., 2017). The governing equations for a FMD system like a wind turbine constitute a highly nonlinear system of constrained partial-differential equations. Kynema-FMB uses analytical Jacobians in the nonlinear-system solves in each time step. Linear systems use sparse storage and several third-party sparse-linear-system solvers are enabled. Ill conditioning of linear systems is mitigated with preconditioning described in Bottasso et al, 2008. Kynema-FMB is integrated with a simple open-source controller (ROSCO). There is an application programming interface (API) for coupling to geometry-resolved CFD (like that in Sharma et al., 2023) and actuator-force CFD (like that in Kuhn et al., 2025). In the latter, for actuator-line models, Kynema-FMB includes an internal blade-element solver that depends on user-provided lookup tables for coefficients of lift and drag, i.e., aerodynamic polars. Kynema-FMB is written in C++ and leverages Kokkos and Kokkos-Kernels (KokkosEcosystem) as its performance portability layer enabling simulations on both CPU and GPU systems. The repository is equipped with extensive automated testing at the unit and regression/system levels. The following describes the high-level development objectives conceived for Kynema: *Kynema will follow modern software development best practices, including test-driven development (TDD), version control, hierarchical automated testing, and continuous integration (CI) for a robust development environment. *The core data structures are memory efficient and enable vectorization and parallelization at multiple levels. *Data structures are data-oriented to exploit methods for accelerated computing including high utilization of chip resources (e.g., single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instruction sets) and parallelization using GP-GPUs. *The computational algorithms incorporate robust open-source libraries for mathematical operations, resource allocation, and data management. *The API design considers multiple stakeholder needs and ensure integration with existing and future ecosystems for data science, machine learning, and AI. *Kynema-FMB is written in modern C++ and leverages Kokkos as its performance-portability library with inspiration from the kynema stack.

Sprague, MichaelA.↗

Enabling Large-Scale Condensed-Phase Hybrid Density Functional Theory Based Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics. 1. Theory, Algorithm, and Performance

By including a fraction of exact exchange (EXX), hybrid functionals reduce the self-interaction error in semilocal density functional theory (DFT) and thereby furnish a more accurate and reliable description of the underlying electronic structure in systems throughout biology, chemistry, physics, and materials science. However, the high computational cost associated with the evaluation of all required EXX quantities has limited the applicability of hybrid DFT in the treatment of large molecules and complex condensed-phase materials. To overcome this limitation, we describe a linear-scaling approach that utilizes a local representation of the occupied orbitals (e.g., maximally localized Wannier functions (MLWFs)) to exploit the sparsity in the real-space evaluation of the quantum mechanical exchange interaction in finite-gap systems. In this work, we present a detailed description of the theoretical and algorithmic advances required to perform MLWF-based ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations of large-scale condensed-phase systems of interest at the hybrid DFT level. We focus our theoretical discussion on the integration of this approach into the framework of Car–Parrinello AIMD, and highlight the central role played by the MLWF-product potential (i.e., the solution of Poisson’s equation for each corresponding MLWF-product density) in the evaluation of the EXX energy and wave function forces. We then provide a comprehensive description of the exx algorithm implemented in the open-source Quantum ESPRESSO program, which employs a hybrid MPI/OpenMP parallelization scheme to efficiently utilize the high-performance computing (HPC) resources available on current- and next-generation supercomputer architectures. Furthermore, this is followed by a critical assessment of the accuracy and parallel performance (e.g., strong and weak scaling) of this approach when AIMD simulations of liquid water are performed in the canonical (NVT) ensemble. With access to HPC resources, we demonstrate that exx enables hybrid DFT-based AIMD simulations of condensed-phase systems containing 500–1000 atoms (e.g., (H₂O)₂₅₆) with a wall time cost that is comparable to that of semilocal DFT. In doing so, exx takes us one step closer to routinely performing AIMD simulations of complex and large-scale condensed-phase systems for sufficiently long time scales at the hybrid DFT level of theory.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Branson: A Mini-App for Studying Parallel IMC, Version 1.0

This code solves the gray thermal radiative transfer (TRT) equations in parallel using simple opacities and Cartesian meshes. Although Branson solves the TRT equations it is not designed to model radiation transport: Branson contains simple physics and does not have a multigroup treatment, nor can it use physical material data. The opacities have are simple polynomials in temperature there is a limited ability to specify complex geometries and sources. Branson was designed only to capture the computational demands of production IMC codes, especially in large parallel runs. It was also intended to foster collaboration with vendors, universities and other DOE partners. Branson is similar in character to the neutron transport proxy-app Quicksilver from LLNL, which was recently open-sourced.

Long, Alex↗

Dynamic Network Analysis of Nuclear Science Literature for Research Influence Assessment

Analyzing nuclear science literature via data-driven methods is a critical step for assessing research influence and technology advancements. Indicators of scholarly activities may be buried in large volumes of nuclear research publications and collaboration networks over time. Mining for relevant scholarly influence trends in large volumes of text can be computationally challenging; however, open-source information on research collaborations over time can offer opportunities to extract meaningful insights. While network centrality analysis of scholarly research provides topology-based insights, additional emphasis on dynamics associated with the diffusion of information through these networks is important. Here this paper represents a step in that direction through the development of a novel dynamic network analysis framework and computational engine to identify key entities and capabilities over time within global scholarly nuclear science collaboration networks. Network theoretic, stochastic simulation, and optimization methods are leveraged to address variability in scholarly interactions, influence propagation, and collaboration patterns via network connections. A topic-aware influence maximization algorithm is developed to address the goal of identifying key influential authors in diverse research topics over time. Efficient parallelized implementation of the algorithm is applied to reduce computational costs. A proof-of-concept case study using open-source Scopus data with 33,517 published nuclear research papers from 2000-2019 is presented and representative analytic insights are generated. Broad implications of these insights are discussed and future research directions are also identified.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Branson: A Mini-App for Studying Parallel IMC, Version 1.0

This code solves the gray thermal radiative transfer (TRT) equations in parallel using simple opacities and Cartesian meshes. Although Branson solves the TRT equations it is not designed to model radiation transport: Branson contains simple physics and does not have a multigroup treatment, nor can it use physical material data. The opacities have are simple polynomials in temperature there is a limited ability to specify complex geometries and sources. Branson was designed only to capture the computational demands of production IMC codes, especially in large parallel runs. It was also intended to foster collaboration with vendors, universities and other DOE partners. Branson is similar in character to the neutron transport proxy-app Quicksilver from LLNL, which was recently open-sourced.

Long, Alex↗

Preparing sparse solvers for exascale computing

Sparse solvers provide essential functionality for a wide variety of scientific applications. Highly parallel sparse solvers are essential for continuing advances in high-fidelity, multi-physics and multi-scale simulations, especially as we target exascale platforms. This paper describes the challenges, strategies and progress of the US Department of Energy Exascale Computing project towards providing sparse solvers for exascale computing platforms. We address the demands of systems with thousands of high-performance node devices where exposing concurrency, hiding latency and creating alternative algorithms become essential. The efforts described here are works in progress, highlighting current success and upcoming challenges.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Distributed Cross-Channel Hierarchical Aggregation for Foundation Models

Vision-based scientific foundation models hold significant promise for advancing scientific discovery and innovation. This potential stems from their ability to aggregate images from diverse sources—such as varying physical groundings or data acquisition systems—and to learn spatio-temporal correlations using transformer architectures. However, tokenizing and aggregating images can be compute-intensive, a challenge not fully addressed by current distributed methods. In this work, we introduce the Distributed Cross-Channel Hierarchical Aggregation (D-CHAG) approach designed for datasets with a large number of channels across image modalities. Our method is compatible with any model-parallel strategy and any type of vision transformer architecture, significantly improving computational efficiency. We evaluated D-CHAG on hyperspectral imaging and weather forecasting tasks. When integrated with tensor parallelism and model sharding, our approach achieved up to a 75% reduction in memory usage and more than doubled sustained throughput on up to 1,024 AMD GPUs on the Frontier Supercomputer.

Tsaris, Aristeidis (aris) [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000277↗

A year in the life of a parallel file system

I/O performance is a critical aspect of data-intensive scientific computing. We seek to advance the state of the practice in understanding and diagnosing I/O performance issues through investigation of a comprehensive I/O performance data set that captures a full year of production storage activity at two leadership-scale computing facilities. We demonstrate techniques to identify regions of interest, perform focused investigations of both long-term trends and transient anomalies, and uncover the contributing factors that lead to performance fluctuation. We find that a year in the life of a parallel file system is comprised of distinct regions of long-term performance variation in addition to short-term performance transients. We demonstrate how systematic identification of these performance regions, combined with comprehensive analysis, allows us to isolate the factors contributing to different performance maladies at different time scales. From this, we present specific lessons learned and important considerations for HPC storage practitioners.

Lockwood, GK↗

symPACK: A GPU-Capable Fan-Out Sparse Cholesky Solver

Sparse symmetric positive definite systems of equations are ubiquitous in scientific workloads and applications. Parallel sparse Cholesky factorization is the method of choice for solving such linear systems. Therefore, the development of parallel sparse Cholesky codes that can efficiently run on today’s large-scale heterogeneous distributed-memory platforms is of vital importance. Modern supercomputers offer nodes that contain a mix of CPUs and GPUs. To fully utilize the computing power of these nodes, scientific codes must be adapted to offload expensive computations to GPUs. We present symPACK, a GPU-capable parallel sparse Cholesky solver that uses one-sided communication primitives and remote procedure calls provided by the UPC++ library. We also utilize the UPC++ "memory kinds" feature to enable efficient communication of GPU-resident data. We show that on a number of large problems, symPACK outperforms comparable state-of-the-art GPU-capable Cholesky factorization codes by up to 14x on the NERSC Perlmutter supercomputer.

Bellavita, Julian↗