Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “parallelization”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 163 records · Page 9

Parallelization techniques for quantum simulation of fermionic systems

Mapping fermionic operators to qubit operators is an essential step for simulating fermionic systems on a quantum computer. We investigate how the choice of such a mapping interacts with the underlying qubit connectivity of the quantum processor to enable (or impede) parallelization of the resulting Hamiltonian-simulation algorithm. It is shown that this problem can be mapped to a path coloring problem on a graph constructed from the particular choice of encoding fermions onto qubits and the fermionic interactions onto paths. The basic version of this problem is called the weak coloring problem. Taking into account the fine-grained details of the mapping yields what is called the strong coloring problem, which leads to improved parallelization performance. A variety of illustrative analytical and numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the amount of improvement for both weak and strong coloring-based parallelizations. Our results are particularly important for implementation on near-term quantum processors where minimizing circuit depth is necessary for algorithmic feasibility.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Rasterization with Data-Parallel Primitives

Parallel rasterization can suffer from race conditions during fragment generation, which is traditionally addressed by using specialized hardware accessible via vendor graphics APIs. Unfortunately, graphics APIs are increasingly problematic on high-performance computers, either because they are not provided or because of concerns about dependencies with in situ visualization. In response, we present a hardware-agnostic rasterization algorithm that handles race conditions using only data-parallel primitives (DPPs), enabling efficient rendering on HPC systems without graphics API dependencies and aligning with recent efforts to deliver visualization software with DPPs. Our evaluation consists of three phases: (1) evaluating portability across different CPU and GPU architectures, (2) evaluating competitiveness with a community standard, and (3) evaluating performance across varying workloads and available parallelism. The supporting experiments run on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, considering data sets as large as 460 million triangles and 160 million pixels. While performance generally falls short of graphics API baselines, it achieves interactive frame rates on most workloads. As a result, we conclude our approach is a viable solution for rasterization on high-performance computers since our approach is portably performant across different architectures without the need for specialized vendor support.

Buckley, Makani [University of Oregon] (ORCID:0009↗

In situ Parallel Training of Analog Neural Network Using Electrochemical Random-Access Memory

In-memory computing based on non-volatile resistive memory can significantly improve the energy efficiency of artificial neural networks. However, accurate in situ training has been challenging due to the nonlinear and stochastic switching of the resistive memory elements. One promising analog memory is the electrochemical random-access memory (ECRAM), also known as the redox transistor. Its low write currents and linear switching properties across hundreds of analog states enable accurate and massively parallel updates of a full crossbar array, which yield rapid and energy-efficient training. While simulations predict that ECRAM based neural networks achieve high training accuracy at significantly higher energy efficiency than digital implementations, these predictions have not been experimentally achieved. In this work, we train a 3 × 3 array of ECRAM devices that learns to discriminate several elementary logic gates (AND, OR, NAND). We record the evolution of the network’s synaptic weights during parallel in situ (on-line) training, with outer product updates. Due to linear and reproducible device switching characteristics, our crossbar simulations not only accurately simulate the epochs to convergence, but also quantitatively capture the evolution of weights in individual devices. The implementation of the first in situ parallel training together with strong agreement with simulation results provides a significant advance toward developing ECRAM into larger crossbar arrays for artificial neural network accelerators, which could enable orders of magnitude improvements in energy efficiency of deep neural networks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Parallelized domain decomposition for multi-dimensional Lagrangian random walk mass-transfer particle tracking schemes

Lagrangian particle tracking schemes allow a wide range of flow and transport processes to be simulated accurately, but a major challenge is numerically implementing the inter-particle interactions in an efficient manner. This article develops a multi-dimensional, parallelized domain decomposition (DDC) strategy for mass-transfer particle tracking (MTPT) methods in which particles exchange mass dynamically. We show that this can be efficiently parallelized by employing large numbers of CPU cores to accelerate run times. In order to validate the approach and our theoretical predictions we focus our efforts on a well-known benchmark problem with pure diffusion, where analytical solutions in any number of dimensions are well established. In this work, we investigate different procedures for “tiling” the domain in two and three dimensions (2-D and 3-D), as this type of formal DDC construction is currently limited to 1-D. An optimal tiling is prescribed based on physical problem parameters and the number of available CPU cores, as each tiling provides distinct results in both accuracy and run time. We further extend the most efficient technique to 3-D for comparison, leading to an analytical discussion of the effect of dimensionality on strategies for implementing DDC schemes. Increasing computational resources (cores) within the DDC method produces a trade-off between inter-node communication and on-node work. For an optimally subdivided diffusion problem, the 2-D parallelized algorithm achieves nearly perfect linear speedup in comparison with the serial run-up to around 2700 cores, reducing a 5 h simulation to 8 s, while the 3-D algorithm maintains appreciable speedup up to 1700 cores.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Massively parallel modeling and inversion of electrical resistivity tomography data using PFLOTRAN

Abstract. Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is a broadly accepted geophysical method for subsurface investigations. Interpretation of field ERT data usually requires the application of computationally intensive forward modeling and inversion algorithms. For large-scale ERT data, the efficiency of these algorithms depends on the robustness, accuracy, and scalability on high-performance computing resources. In this regard, we present a robust and highly scalable implementation of forward modeling and inversion algorithms for ERT data. The implementation is publicly available and developed within the framework of PFLOTRAN, an open-source, state-of-the-art massively parallel subsurface flow and transport simulation code. The forward modeling is based on a finite-volume discretization of the governing differential equations, and the inversion uses a Gauss–Newton optimization scheme. To evaluate the accuracy of the forward modeling, two examples are first presented by considering layered (1D) and 3D earth conductivity models. The computed numerical results show good agreement with the analytical solutions for the layered earth model and results from a well-established code for the 3D model. Inversion of ERT data, simulated for a 3D model, is then performed to demonstrate the inversion capability by recovering the conductivity of the model. To demonstrate the parallel performance of PFLOTRAN's ERT process model and inversion capabilities, large-scale scalability tests are performed by using up to 131 072 processes on a leadership class supercomputer. These tests are performed for the two most computationally intensive steps of the ERT inversion: forward modeling and Jacobian computation. For the forward modeling, we consider models with up to 122 ×106 degrees of freedom (DOFs) in the resulting system of linear equations and demonstrate that the code exhibits almost linear scalability on up to 10 000 DOFs per process. On the other hand, the code shows superlinear scalability for the Jacobian computation, mainly because all computations are fairly evenly distributed over each process with no parallel communication.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Parallelizing the Unpacking and Clustering of Detector Data for Reconstruction of Charged Particle Tracks on Multi-core CPUs and Many-core GPUs

We present results from parallelizing the unpacking and clustering steps of the raw data from the silicon strip modules for reconstruction of charged particle tracks. Throughput is further improved by concurrently processing multiple events using nested OpenMP parallelism on CPU or CUDA streams on GPU. The new implementation along with earlier work in developing a parallelized and vectorized implementation of the combinatoric Kalman filter algorithm has enabled efficient global reconstruction of the entire event on modern computer architectures. We demonstrate the performance of the new implementation on Intel Xeon and NVIDIA GPU architectures.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Stable Parallel Training of Wasserstein Conditional Generative Adversarial Neural Networks : *Full/Regular Research Paper submission for the symposium CSCI-ISAI: Artificial Intelligence

We use a stable parallel approach to train Wasserstein Conditional Generative Adversarial Neural Networks (W-CGANs). The parallel training reduces the risk of mode collapse and enhances scalability by using multiple generators that are concurrently trained, each one of them focusing on a single data label. The use of the Wasserstein metric reduces the risk of cycling by stabilizing the training of each generator. We apply the approach on the CIFAR10 and the CIFAR100 datasets, two standard benchmark datasets with images of the same resolution, but different number of classes. Performance is assessed using the inception score, the Fréchet inception distance, and image quality. An improvement in inception score and Fréchet inception distance is shown in comparison to previous results obtained by performing the parallel approach on deep convolutional conditional generative adversarial neural networks (DC-CGANs). Weak scaling is attained on both datasets using up to 100 NVIDIA V100 GPUs on the OLCF supercomputer Summit.

Lupo Pasini, Massimiliano↗

Scalable Graph Analytics and HPC Operational Enhancement: Parallel Computing and ML/DL Innovations

Parallel computing plays a pivotal role in the efficient processing of large-scale graphs. Complex network analysis stands as a capti- vating research frontier, holding promise across diverse scientific domains such as sociology, biology, online media, and recommenda- tion systems. In this era, Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) have emerged as indispensable tools, underpinning remarkable technological achievements. Within this dynamic landscape, my research revolves around advancing parallel algorithms tailored for large-scale graph operations. To achieve this, I harness the power of cutting-edge technologies including OpenMP, MPI, HIP, and CUDA, on the High-Performance Computing (HPC) platforms to unlock optimal performance. I also apply ML/DL techniques to HPC operational data, to streamline the monitoring and maintenance of supercomputers, alleviating the complexities associated with their upkeep and enhancing user support. My research echoes the syn- ergy between parallel computing, large-scale graph analysis, and ML/DL, improving computational efficiency and user experience.

Sattar, Naw Safrin↗

Performance Evaluation of Different Parallel Programming Models in SCALE-Shift Sequences for Criticality and Shielding Applications [Abstract]

The SCALE code system has been widely used for nuclear criticality safety, reactor physics, radiation shielding, source term generation, and inventory analyses by researchers, industry, and regulatory bodies. Although limited support for shared- and distributed-memory parallel processing was introduced via C++ threading, OpenMP, and MPI, a hybrid parallel programming model with both distributed- and shared-memory parallelism has not been fully supported in the SCALE code system.

Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)↗

Moment-Fourier approach to ion parallel fluid closures and transport for a toroidally confined plasma

A general method of solving the drift kinetic equation is developed for an axisymmetric magnetic field. Expanding a distribution function in general moments, a set of ordinary differential equations is obtained. Successively expanding the moments and magnetic-field involved quantities in Fourier series, a set of linear algebraic equations is obtained. The set of full (Maxwellian and non-Maxwellian) moment equations is solved to express the first-order density, temperature, and flow velocity in terms of radial gradients of the zeroth-order pressure and temperature. Closure relations that connect parallel heat flux density and viscosity to the radial gradients and parallel gradients of temperature and flow velocity are also obtained by solving the non-Maxwellian moment equations. The closure relations combined with the linearized fluid equations reproduce the same solution obtained directly from the full moment equations. Furthermore, the method can be generalized to derive closures and transport for an electron-ion plasma and a multi-ion plasma in a general magnetic field.

neoclassical transport↗

Formal Definitions and Performance Comparison of Consistency Models for Parallel File Systems

The semantics of HPC storage systems are defined by the consistency models to which they abide. Storage consistency models have been less studied than their counterparts in memory systems, with the exception of the POSIX standard and its strict consistency model. The use of POSIX consistency imposes a performance penalty that becomes more significant as the scale of parallel file systems increases and the access time to storage devices, such as node-local solid storage devices, decreases. While some efforts have been made to adopt relaxed storage consistency models, these models are often defined informally and ambiguously as by-products of a particular implementation. Here in this work, we establish a connection between memory consistency models and storage consistency models and revisit the key design choices of storage consistency models from a high-level perspective. Further, we propose a formal and unified framework for defining storage consistency models and a layered implementation that can be used to easily evaluate their relative performance for different I/O workloads. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive performance comparison of two relaxed consistency models on a range of commonly seen parallel I/O workloads, such as checkpoint/restart of scientific applications and random reads of deep learning applications. We demonstrate that for certain I/O scenarios, a weaker consistency model can significantly improve the I/O performance. For instance, in small random reads that are typically found in deep learning applications, session consistency achieved a 5x improvement in I/O bandwidth compared to commit consistency, even at small scales.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

TOUGH3-FLAC3D: a modeling approach for parallel computing of fluid flow and geomechanics

The recent development of the TOUGH3 code allows for a faster and more reliable fluid flow simulator. At the same time, new versions of FLAC3D are released periodically, allowing for new features and faster execution. In this paper, we present the first implementation of the coupling between TOUGH3 and FLAC3Dv6/7, maintaining parallel computing capabilities for the coupled fluid flow and geomechanical codes. We compare the newly developed version with analytical solutions and with the previous approach, and provide some performance analysis on different meshes and varying the number of running processors. Finally, we present two case studies related to fault reactivation during CO 2 sequestration and nuclear waste disposal. The use of parallel computing allows for meshes with a larger number of elements, and hence more detailed understanding of thermo-hydro-mechanical processes occurring at depth.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Stable parallel training of Wasserstein conditional generative adversarial neural networks

In this work, we propose a stable, parallel approach to train Wasserstein conditional generative adversarial neural networks (W-CGANs) under the constraint of a fixed computational budget. Differently from previous distributed GANs training techniques, our approach avoids inter-process communications, reduces the risk of mode collapse and enhances scalability by using multiple generators, each one of them concurrently trained on a single data label. The use of the Wasserstein metric also reduces the risk of cycling by stabilizing the training of each generator. We illustrate the approach on the CIFAR10, CIFAR100, and ImageNet1k datasets, three standard benchmark image datasets, maintaining the original resolution of the images for each dataset. Performance is assessed in terms of scalability and final accuracy within a limited fixed computational time and computational resources. To measure accuracy, we use the inception score, the Fréchet inception distance, and image quality. An improvement in inception score and Fréchet inception distance is shown in comparison to previous results obtained by performing the parallel approach on deep convolutional conditional generative adversarial neural networks as well as an improvement of image quality of the new images created by the GANs approach. Weak scaling is attained on both datasets using up to 2000 NVIDIA V100 GPUs on the OLCF supercomputer Summit.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Model-parallel Fourier neural operators as learned surrogates for large-scale parametric PDEs

Fourier neural operators (FNOs) are a recently introduced neural network architecture for learning solution operators of partial differential equations (PDEs), which have been shown to perform significantly better than comparable deep learning approaches. Once trained, FNOs can achieve speed-ups of multiple orders of magnitude over conventional numerical PDE solvers. However, due to the high dimensionality of their input data and network weights, FNOs have so far only been applied to two-dimensional or small three-dimensional problems. To remove this limited problem-size barrier, we propose a model-parallel version of FNOs based on domain-decomposition of both the input data and network weights. Here, we demonstrate that our model-parallel FNO is able to predict time-varying PDE solutions of over 2.6 billion variables on Perlmutter using up to 512 A100 GPUs and show an example of training a distributed FNO on the Azure cloud for simulating multiphase CO 2 dynamics in the Earth’s subsurface.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Parallel exponential time differencing methods for geophysical flow simulations

Two ocean models are considered for geophysical flow simulations: the multilayer shallow water equations and the multilayer primitive equations. For the former, we investigate the parallel performance of exponential time differencing (ETD) methods, including exponential Rosenbrock–Euler, ETD2wave, and B-ETD2wave. For the latter, we take advantage of the splitting of barotropic and baroclinic modes and propose a new two-level method in which an ETD method is applied to solve the fast barotropic mode. Furthermore, these methods could improve the computational efficiency of numerical simulations because ETD methods allow for much larger time step sizes than traditional explicit time-stepping techniques that are commonly used in existing computational ocean models. Several standard benchmark tests for ocean modeling are performed and comparison of the numerical results demonstrates a great potential of applying the parallel ETD methods for simulating real-world geophysical flows.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Parallel derivative-free optimization for simulation-based design of behind-the-meter energy systems

In this work, the integrated design and dispatch of behind-the-meter or distributed resources (e.g. stationary battery storage and solar PV generation) is considered. A simulation-based framework is employed, generating high-fidelity results with closed-loop predictive control at a fine resolution, at the expense of high computational cost (several minutes to a few hours per design point). To address this challenge, parallel derivative-free design methods are considered. Four methods are compared, including state-of-the-art surrogate-based methods (Radial-Basis Functions and Gaussian processes) and sampling strategies, an evolutionary-based method, and a simple sequential grid refinement method. As a case study, two types of design problem with increasing complexity are considered, namely, the design of behind-the-meter resources (three design variables) and the inclusion of grid capacity (four design variables). The second yields a constrained design problem for which violations can only be determined after solving the computationally expensive simulation. For the three-dimensional case, all methods present a good performance, achieving a solution within 1% of the optimum after the first iteration, with the sequential grid refinement exhibiting the fastest convergence and achieving the best final objective value. This indicates that the parallel evaluation of multiple sampling points may be more important than the choice of method for small decision spaces. For the four-dimensional constrained case, the Genetic Algorithm presents the best tradeoff between performance and computational effort, while the rough objective function terrain generated by constraint violation penalties reduces the performance of surrogate-based methods. Contour plots with flat regions indicate flexibility in the optimal design and highlight the importance of characterizing the solution space.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A parallel and performance portable implementation of a full-field crystal plasticity model

We have developed a parallel implementation of an Elasto-Viscoplastic Fast Fourier Transform-based (EVPFFT) micromechanical solver to enable computationally efficient crystal plasticity modeling for polycrystalline materials. Our primary focus lies in achieving performance portability, allowing a single EVPFFT implementation to run optimally on various homogeneous architectures, including multi-core Central Processing Units (CPUs), as well as on heterogeneous computer architectures comprising multi-core CPUs and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) from different vendors. To accomplish this goal, we have leveraged MATAR, a C++ software library that simplifies the creation and utilization of multidimensional dense or sparse matrix and array data structures. These data structures are designed to be portable across diverse architectures through the use of Kokkos, a performance-portable library. Additionally, we have employed the Message Passing Interface (MPI) to efficiently distribute the computational workload among processors. The heFFTe (Highly Efficient FFT for Exascale) library is used to facilitate the performance portability of the fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) computation. The computational performance of EVPFFT is evaluated and presented in terms of parallel scalability and simulation runtime on different high-performance computing (HPC) architectures. As a result, the utility of the developed framework to efficiently simulate the micro-mechanical fields in polycrystalline microstructures in engineering applications is discussed.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

OpenSn: A massively parallel, open-source simulation environment for discrete ordinates radiation transport

OpenSn is an open-source, massively parallel deterministic radiation transport code for solving the discrete-ordinates ( S N ) form of the Boltzmann transport equation on unstructured, arbitrary polyhedral meshes. It supports high-fidelity simulations involving steady-state, eigenvalue, and adjoint problems for neutral particles (e.g., neutrons, photons, multi-particles), using the multigroup approximation in energy. OpenSn combines angular discretization via discrete ordinates with a discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) in space, enabling accurate resolution of transport physics on arbitrary polyhedral cells, included locally refined spatial grids. It includes multiple angular quadrature types, including locally refined angular quadratures. Written in modern C++ with a Python API, OpenSn runs efficiently on platforms ranging from laptops to supercomputers. The transport sweep algorithm is implemented using a task-based, directed-acyclic-graph (DAG) approach for each angle and supports asynchronous parallelism across thousands of MPI ranks. Group-set aggregation improves compute intensity, and synthetic acceleration techniques (e.g., diffusion synthetic acceleration, second-moment method) enhance solver convergence. OpenSn has been verified on reactor physics problems and demonstrated excellent weak and strong scaling performance on more than 32,768 processes, making it a versatile and robust platform for large-scale transport simulations in complex geometries.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗