Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Computer Programming and software”

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 199 records · Page 11

pyTCR: A tropical cyclone rainfall model for python

pyTCR is a climatology software package developed in the Python programming language. It integrates the capabilities of several legacy physical models and increases computational efficiency to allow rapid estimation of tropical cyclone (TC) rainfall consistent with the large-scale environment. Specifically, pyTCR implements a horizontally distributed and vertically integrated model [Zhu et al., 2013] for simulating rainfall driven by TCs. Along storm tracks, rainfall is estimated by computing the cross-boundary-layer, upward water vapor transport caused by different mechanisms including frictional convergence, vortex stretching, large-scale baroclinic effect (i.e., wind shear), topographic forcing, and radiative cooling [Lu et al., 2018]. The package provides essential functionalities for modeling and interpreting spatio-temporal TC rainfall data. pyTCR requires a limited number of model input parameters, making it a convenient and useful tool for analyzing rainfall mechanisms driven by TCs. To sample rare (most intense) rainfall events that are often of great societal interest, pyTCR adapts and leverages outputs from a statistical-dynamical TC downscaling model [Lin et al., 2023] capable of rapidly generating a large number of synthetic TCs given a certain climate. As a result, pyTCR significantly reduces computational effort and improves the efficiency in capturing extreme TC rainfall events at the tail of the distributions from limited datasets. Furthermore, the TC downscaling model is forced entirely by large-scale environmental conditions from reanalysis data or coupled General Circulation Models (GCMs), simplifying the projection of TC-induced rainfall and wind speed under future climate using pyTCR. Finally, pyTCR can be coupled with hydrological and wind models to assess risks associated with independent and compound events (e.g., storm surges and freshwater flooding).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Integration of the NCRC Database and Other INL Databases

The Nuclear Computational Resource Center provides a portal by which industry professionals, educational staff, students, national laboratory employees, and others may request access to certain engineering software tools. As the tools provided through the Nuclear Computational Resource Center portal are not open-source and freely available, a set of approvals are necessary before access is granted. All code recipients must be associated with an institution that has a license with Idaho National Laboratory for the code requested. Information about these licenses is controlled by Idaho National Laboratory’s Technology Deployment organization and housed in a Technology Deployment database. Those requesting code access who are not citizens of the United States must also have a security plan, mandated by Idaho National Laboratory policy. Security plans are managed by the International Access Program and are stored in an International Access Program database known as IFacts. Granting access to software thus depends on information stored in the Technology Deployment database and IFacts. In the past, no connection between the Nuclear Computational Resource Center portal and these databases existed, making checking the status of license agreements and security plans time consuming and error prone. This report demonstrates that the Nuclear Computational Resource Center portal now connects to both the Technology Deployment database and IFacts, greatly improving the ease of use of the Nuclear Computational Resource Center system for administrators, which leads to a better overall experience for those requesting code access.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Recent SCALE Activities Within the Nuclear Criticality Safety Program

The role of SCALE in the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) is defined according to the Five-Year Plan, and summarized as follows. 1. Sustain/improve SCALE NCS features through user driven enhancements, software quality assurance (SQA) and validation and verification (V&V). 2. Assure adaptability to various computing platforms and compilers. 3. Improve user interfaces/documentation consistent with modern engineering software. 4. Support responsive communication to SCALE criticality safety users through SCALE Newsletters, email notices, and updates on the SCALE website. 5. Modernize software infrastructure and capabilities to improve quality and reliability and to ensure long term sustainability of the NCS capabilities. This paper describes the specific activities which have been performed within each area above for the NCSP in the fiscal year (FY) 2018, from October 1, 2017, to September 30, 2018.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

GridOPTICS/GridPACK

GridPACK is a software framework consisting of a set of modules designed to simplify the development of programs that model the power grid and run on parallel, high performance computing platforms. It also contains several fully developed applications, including powerflow, dynamic simulation, state estimation, Kalman filter analysis (dynamic state estimation), contingency analysis and real time path rating. These applications can be used either standalone or as components in more complicated workflows that combine several different types of application together. The framework modules are available as a combination of libraries and software templates and consist of components for setting up and distributing power grid networks, support for modeling the behavior of individual buses and branches in the network, converting the network models to the corresponding algebraic equations, and parallel routines for manipulating and solving large algebraic systems. The framework also contains a module for distributing tasks evenly amongst computing resources, even if individual tasks vary widely in their execution times. Additional modules support input and output, basic statistical analysis of contingency based calculations, distributed data structures, as well as basic profiling and error management.

Palmer, Bruce↗

Cyber security using multi-threaded architecture data diode at the NBSR - 114

Ongoing upgrades for the control room of the National Bureau of Standards Reactor (NBSR) located at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) require the ability to collect sensor data from the secured reactor network and transfer to the outside network for trend analysis, while maintaining the security of the reactor network. To accomplish this, a data diode was created to provide a physical barrier that prevents any outside data from reaching the secured reactor network. The hardware of the data diode consists of two embedded computers, running Unix based operating systems, connected by three DB-9 serial cables. The serial cables have been modified so that only two wires, a ground and a transmission line, provide connection between the computers. The data diode relies on a multi-threaded architecture to collect and simultaneously transfer data over three serial connections. A software program, implemented in Java, has been written to request data from the digital recorders installed to monitor the NBSR process instrumentation and transfer that data across the serial connections. The data diode can collect over 1200 data points from multiple digital recorders each second. The collected data can then be stored in a relational database for later analysis. The source codes for the software are available open source on GitHub. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

PySpawn: Software for Nonadiabatic Quantum Molecular Dynamics

The ab initio multiple spawning (AIMS) method enables nonadiabatic quantum molecular dynamics simulations in an arbitrary number of dimensions, with potential energy surfaces provided by electronic structure calculations performed on-the-fly. However, the intricacy of the AIMS algorithm complicates software development, deployment on modern shared computer resources, and post-simulation data analysis. PySpawn is a nonadiabatic molecular dynamics software package that addresses these issues. Here, the program is designed to be easily interfaced with electronic structure software, and an interface to the TeraChem software package is described here. PySpawn introduces a task-based reorganization of the AIMS algorithm, allowing fine-grained restart capability and setting the stage for efficient parallelization in a future release. PySpawn includes a user-friendly and interactive Python analysis module that will enable novice users to painlessly adopt AIMS. As a demonstration of PySpawn’s simulation capability and analysis module, we report complete active space self-consistent field–based AIMS simulations of the 1,2- dithienyl-1,2-dicyanoethene molecule, a promising molecular photoswitch.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Enhancements supporting IC usage of PEM libraries on next-gen platforms

This milestone reports on the culmination of several years of effort by multiple PEM support software development teams to provide capabilities for use in LLNL-developed integrated codes on next-gen ASC platforms, including GPU support. We will provide a survey of relevant Application Program Interfaces (API) that are required to support LLNL IC code capability on relevant architectures, with a focus on Sierra and El Capitan. We will identify and summarize all dependencies between PEM supported libraries and IC supported physics codes. We will provide an assessment of algorithmic improvements that have been deployed, as well as future developments that are required to complete the GPU porting efforts. This assessment will include a description of programming models adopted by each of the PEM projects, distinct algorithmic challenges for each of the capabilities, and information about sharing GPU memory between the APIs and host codes. We will develop targeted test problems to assess computational performance. Finally, this milestone will result in identification of gaps in our effort to assist the LLNL ASC program in prioritization of effort for porting software to El Capitan.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum Chemistry Common Driver and Databases (QCDB) and Quantum Chemistry Engine (QCEngine): Automation and interoperability among computational chemistry programs

We report that community efforts in the computational molecular sciences (CMS) are evolving toward modular, open, and interoperable interfaces that work with existing community codes to provide more functionality and composability than could be achieved with a single program. The Quantum Chemistry Common Driver and Databases (QCDB) project provides such capability through an application programming interface (API) that facilitates interoperability across multiple quantum chemistry software packages. In tandem with the Molecular Sciences Software Institute and their Quantum Chemistry Archive ecosystem, the unique functionalities of several CMS programs are integrated, including CFOUR, GAMESS, NWChem, OpenMM, Psi4, Qcore, TeraChem, and Turbomole, to provide common computational functions, i.e., energy, gradient, and Hessian computations as well as molecular properties such as atomic charges and vibrational frequency analysis. Both standard users and power users benefit from adopting these APIs as they lower the language barrier of input styles and enable a standard layout of variables and data. These designs allow end-to-end interoperable programming of complex computations and provide best practices options by default.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Tumor Volume Is Better Than Diameter for Predicting the Prognosis of Patients with Early-Stage Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Background: This study aimed to investigate whether tumor volume (TV) is better than diameter for predicting the prognosis of patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after complete resection. Methods: This study retrospectively reviewed the clinicopathologic characteristics of 274 patients with early-stage NSCLC who had received pretreatment computed tomography (CT) scans and complete resection. TV was semi-automatically measured from CT scans using an imaging software program. The optimal cutoff of TV was determined by X-tile software. Disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were assessed by the Kaplan–Meier method. The prognostic significance of TV and other variables was assessed by Cox proportional hazards regression analysis. Results: Using 3.046 cm{sup 3} and 8.078 cm{sup 3} as optimal cutoff values of TV, the patients were separated into three groups. A larger TV was significantly associated with poor DFS and OS in the multivariable analysis. Kaplan–Meier curves of DFS and OS showed significant differences on the basis of TV among patients with stage 1a disease, greatest tumor diameter (GTD) of 2 cm or smaller, and GTD of 2–3 cm, respectively. Using two TV cutoff points, three categories of TV were created. In 54 cases (19.7%), patients migrated from the GTD categories of 2 cm or smaller, 2–3 cm, and larger than 3 cm into the TV categories of 3.046 cm{sup 3} or smaller, 3.046–8.078 cm{sup 3}, and larger than 8.078 cm{sup 3}. Conclusion: TV is an independent prognostic factor of DFS and OS for early-stage NSCLC. The findings show that TV is better than GTD for predicting the prognosis of patients with early-stage NSCLC.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

hPIC2: A hardware-accelerated, hybrid particle-in-cell code for dynamic plasma-material interactions

The exascale era of high performance computing promises to bring the field of computational plasma physics ever closer to the goal of accurate multiscale modeling. Such computers will rely on hardware acceleration to offload work to dedicated components, notably general-purpose graphics processing units (GPUs). However, devices from different manufacturers require software to be written with different parallel programming models, greatly increasing the code maintenance burden of applications designed to perform on more than one such device. hPIC2 is a hybrid plasma simulation code developed with the Kokkos performance portability framework to target the architectures that will drive exascale computing for the foreseeable future. As a hybrid simulation code, hPIC2 investigates the simultaneous use of various plasma models on the same domain, at the same time. hPIC2 also optionally couples to RustBCA, which accurately models ion-material interactions using the binary collision approximation (BCA) method. In conclusion, hPIC2 therefore achieves scalable performance on a variety of computing architectures when simulating complex and diverse plasmas, particularly near plasma-material interfaces.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Open hardware solutions in quantum technology

Quantum technologies, such as communication, computing, and sensing, offer vast opportunities for advanced research and development. While an open-source ethos currently exists within some quantum technologies, especially in quantum computer programming, we argue that there are additional advantages in developing open quantum hardware (OQH). Open quantum hardware encompasses open-source software for the control of quantum devices in labs, blueprints, and open-source toolkits for chip design and other hardware components, as well as openly accessible testbeds and facilities that allow cloud-access to a wider scientific community. We provide an overview of current projects in the OQH ecosystem, identify gaps, and make recommendations on how to close them at present. More open quantum hardware would accelerate technology transfer to and growth of the quantum industry and increase accessibility in science.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

The QICK (Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit): Readout and control for qubits and detectors

We introduce a Xilinx RF System-on-Chip (RFSoC)-based qubit controller (called the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK for short), which supports the direct synthesis of control pulses with carrier frequencies of up to 6 GHz. The QICK can control multiple qubits or other quantum devices. The QICK consists of a digital board hosting an RFSoC field-programmable gate array, custom firmware, and software and an optional companion custom-designed analog front-end board. We characterize the analog performance of the system as well as its digital latency, important for quantum error correction and feedback protocols. We benchmark the controller by performing standard characterizations of a transmon qubit. We achieve an average gate fidelity of ℱ avg =99.93%. All of the schematics, firmware, and software are open-source.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

SmartFuse: Reconfigurable Smart Switches to Accelerate Fused Collectives in HPC Applications

Communication switches have sometimes been augmented to process collectives (e.g., the IBM BlueGene project and the Mellanox SHArP switch). In this work, we find that there is a great acceleration opportunity through the further augmentation of switches to accelerate more complex functions that combine communication with computation. We consider three types of such functions. The first is fully-fused collectives built by fusing multiple existing collectives like Allreduce with Alltoall. The second is semi-fused collectives built by combining a collective with another computation. The third we refer to as higher-order collectives built by combining multiple computations and communications, such as to perform matrix-matrix multiply (PGEMM). In this work, we propose a framework called SmartFuse to accelerate fused collective functions. The core of SmartFuse is a reconfigurable smart switch to support these operations. The semi/fully fused collectives are implemented with a CGRAlike architecture, while higher-order collectives are implemented with a more specialized computational unit that can also schedule communication. Supporting our framework is software to evaluate and translate relevant parts of the input program, compile them into a control data flow graph, and then map this graph to the switch hardware. The proposed framework, once deployed, has the strong potential to accelerate existing HPC applications transparently by encapsulation within an MPI implementation. Experimental results show that this approach improves the performance of the PGEMM kernel, MINIFE, and AMG by, on average, 94%, 15%, and 13%, respectively.

Haghi, Pouya↗

Umpire: Application-Focused Management and Coordination of Complex Hierarchical Memory

Advanced architectures like Sierra provide a wide range of memory resources that must often be carefully controlled by the user. These resources have varying capacities, access timing rules, and visibility to different compute resources. Applications must intelligently allocate data in these spaces, and depending on the total amount of memory required, applications may also be forced to move data between different parts of the memory hierarchy. Finally, applications using multiple packages must coordinate effectively to ensure that each package can use the memory resources it needs. To address these challenges, we present Umpire, an application-oriented library for managing memory resources. Specifically, Umpire provides support for querying memory resources, provisioning and allocating memory, and memory introspection. It allows computer scientists and computational physicists to efficiently program the memory hierarchies of current and future high-performance computing architectures, without tying their application to specific hardware or software. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of Umpire and present case studies from the integration of Umpire into applications that are currently running on Sierra.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Advanced Combustion Numerics and Modeling - FY18 First Quarter Report

This project is focused on early stage research and development of numerical methods and models to improve advanced engine combustion concepts and systems. The current focus is on development of new mathematics and algorithms to reduce the time to solution for advanced combustion engine design using detailed fuel chemistry. The research is prioritized towards the most time-consuming workflow bottlenecks (computer and human) and accuracy gaps that slow ACS program members. Zero-RK, the fast and accurate chemical kinetics solver software developed in this project, is central to the research efforts and continues to be developed to address the current and emerging needs of the engine designers, engine modelers and fuel mechanism developers.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

Advanced Combustion Numerics and Modeling - 18M Progress Report (Mar 2018)

This project is focused on early stage research and development of numerical methods and models to improve advanced engine combustion concepts and systems. The current focus is on development of new mathematics and algorithms to reduce the time to solution for advanced combustion engine design using detailed fuel chemistry. The research is prioritized towards the most time-consuming workflow bottlenecks (computer and human) and accuracy gaps that slow ACS program members. Zero-RK, the fast and accurate chemical kinetics solver software developed in this project, is central to the research efforts and continues to be developed to address the current and emerging needs of the engine designers, engine modelers and fuel mechanism developers.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

Advanced Combustion Numerics and Modeling - FY18 Third Quarter Report

This project is focused on early stage research and development of numerical methods and models to improve advanced engine combustion concepts and systems. The current focus is on the development of new mathematics and algorithms to reduce the time to solution for advanced combustion engine design using detailed fuel chemistry. The research is prioritized towards the most time-consuming workflow bottlenecks (computer and human) and accuracy gaps that slow ACS program members. Zero-RK, the fast and accurate chemical kinetics solver software developed in this project, is central to the research efforts and continues to be developed to address the current and emerging needs of the engine designers, engine modelers and fuel mechanism developers.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗