DOE OSTI2016
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) continues to surpass its operational target goals: supporting users; delivering fast, reliable systems; creating innovative solutions for high-performance computing (HPC) needs; and managing risks, safety, and security aspects associated with operating one of the most powerful computers in the world. The results can be seen in the cutting-edge science delivered by users and the praise from the research community. Calendar year (CY) 2015 was filled with outstanding operational results and accomplishments: a very high rating from users on overall satisfaction that ties the highest-ever mark set in CY 2014; the greatest number of core-hours delivered to research projects; the largest percentage of capability usage since the OLCF began tracking the metric in 2009; and success in delivering on the allocation of 60, 30, and 10% of core hours offered for the INCITE (Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment), ALCC (Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge), and Director’s Discretionary programs, respectively. These accomplishments, coupled with the extremely high utilization rate, represent the fulfillment of the promise of Titan: maximum use by maximum-size simulations. The impact of all of these successes and more is reflected in the accomplishments of OLCF users, with publications this year in notable journals Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Chemistry, Nature Physics, Nature Climate Change, ACS Nano, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Physical Review Letters, as well as many others. The achievements included in the 2015 OLCF Operational Assessment Report reflect first-ever or largest simulations in their communities; for example Titan enabled engineers in Los Angeles and the surrounding region to design and begin building improved critical infrastructure by enabling the highest-resolution Cybershake map for Southern California to date. The Titan system provides the largest extant heterogeneous architecture for computing and computational science. Usage is high, delivering on the promise of a system well-suited for capability simulations for science. This success is due in part to innovations in tracking and reporting the activity on the compute nodes, and using this information to further enable and optimize applications, extending and balancing workload across the entire node. The OLCF continues to invest in innovative processes, tools, and resources necessary to meet continuing user demand. The facility’s leadership in data analysis and workflows was featured at the Department of Energy (DOE) booth at SC15, for the second year in a row, highlighting work with researchers from the National Library of Medicine coupled with unique computational and data resources serving experimental and observational data across facilities. Effective operations of the OLCF play a key role in the scientific missions and accomplishments of its users. Building on the exemplary year of 2014, as shown by the 2014 Operational Assessment Report (OAR) review committee response in Appendix A, this OAR delineates the policies, procedures, and innovations implemented by the OLCF to continue delivering a multi-petaflop resource for cutting-edge research. This report covers CY 2015, which, unless otherwise specified, denotes January 1, 2015, through December 31, 2015.
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