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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.

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At least 271 records · Page 15

Assessment of Envelope- and Machine Learning-Based Electrical Fault Type Detection Algorithms for Electrical Distribution Grids

This study introduces envelope- and machine learning (ML)-based electrical fault type detection algorithms for electrical distribution grids, advancing beyond traditional logic-based methods. The proposed detection model involves three stages: anomaly area detection, ML-based fault presence detection, and ML-based fault type detection. Initially, an envelope-based detector identifying the anomaly region was improved to handle noisier power grid signals from meters. The second stage acts as a switch, detecting the presence of a fault among four classes: normal, motor, switching, and fault. Finally, if a fault is detected, the third stage identifies specific fault types. This study explored various feature extraction methods and evaluated different ML algorithms to maximize prediction accuracy. The performance of the proposed algorithms is tested in an emulated software–hardware electrical grid testbed using different sample rate meters/relays, such as SEL735, SEL421, SEL734, SEL700GT, and SEL351S near and far from an inverter-based photovoltaic array farm. The performance outcomes demonstrate the proposed model’s robustness and accuracy under realistic conditions.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Equation-based and data-driven modeling: Open-source software current state and future directions

Here, a review of current trends in scientific computing reveals a broad shift to open-source and higher-level programming languages such as Python and growing career opportunities over the next decade. Open-source modeling tools accelerate innovation in equation-based and data-driven applications. Significant resources have been deployed to develop data-driven tools (PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn) from tech companies that rely on machine learning services to meet business needs while keeping the foundational tools open. Open-source equation-based tools such as Pyomo, CasADi, Gekko, and JuMP are also gaining momentum according to user community and development pace metrics. Integration of data-driven and principles-based tools is emerging. New compute hardware, productivity software, and training resources have the potential to radically accelerate progress. However, long-term support mechanisms are still necessary to sustain the momentum and maintenance of critical foundational packages.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

TRIM: AI Guided Random Number Generation for Resource-Constrained IoT Systems

Random numbers often serve as the backbone for many security solutions in diverse domains such as cryptography, side channel leakage prevention, and moving target defense. However, generating true random numbers requires a physical source of entropy (e.g. hardware, quantum, environmental phenomenon) making it difficult to realize at a large scale and at a low cost. On the flip side, pseudorandom number generators (easy to implement) following a specific distribution (e.g. Gaussian) can be easily compromised given a sufficient amount of traces. In this work, we have developed a machine learning-guided generative approach that can be used to create portable, resource-efficient, and cost-effective random number generators with high throughput and true randomness characteristics. We implement the proposed approach as a highly parameterized framework and perform extensive evaluation for different settings. The framework was able to learn from true random sources such as irrational numbers and environmental audio noise and imitate those sources towards generating new good quality random numbers on demand. We have generated more than 1 billion bits and observed robust performance in terms of true randomness metrics obtained from NIST SP 800-22 and FIPS 140-1 randomness test suites achieving a throughput of up to 142.85 Mbps. Compared to the state-of-the-art (SOTA) technique, the iso-cost setup of our framework can achieve more than 500 Mbps in a distributed setting. We have evaluated the efficacy of running the true randomness imitation AI models on target edge devices such as Raspberry Pi 4 (Model B), Nvidia Jetson Nano, Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano and Nvidia Jetson Xavier. We have also looked at the security of the TRIM framework itself against different adversarial threat models.

Cybersecurity↗

Mini-apps for high performance data analysis

Scaling-up scientific data analysis and machine learning algorithms for data-driven discovery is a grand challenge that we face today. Despite the growing need for analysis from science domains that are generating `Big Data' from instruments and simulations, building high-performance analytical workflows of data-intensive algorithms have been daunting because: (i) the `Big Data' hardware and software architecture landscape is constantly evolving, (ii) newer architectures impose new programming models, and (iii) data-parallel kernels of analysis algorithms and their performance facets on different architectures are poorly understood. To address these problems, we have: (i) identified scalable data-parallel kernels of popular data analysis algorithms, (ii) implemented `Mini-Apps' of those kernels using different programming models (e.g. Map Reduce, MPI, etc.), (iii) benchmarked and validated the performance of the kernels in diverse architectures. In this paper, we discuss two of those Mini-Apps and show the execution of principal component analysis built as a workflow of the Mini-Apps. We show that Mini-Apps enable scientists to (i) write domain-specific data analysis code that scales on most HPC hardware and (ii) and offers the ability (most times with over a 10x speed-up) to analyze data sizes 100 times the size of what off-the-shelf desktop/workstations of today can handle.

Sukumar, Sreenivas R.↗

On-demand data analytics in HPC environments at leadership computing facilities: Challenges and experiences

Scaling-up scientific data analysis and machine learning algorithms for data-driven discovery is a grand challenge that we face today. Despite the growing need for analysis from science domains that are generating `Big Data' from instruments and simulations, building high-performance analytical workflows of data-intensive algorithms have been daunting because: (i) the `Big Data' hardware and software architecture landscape is constantly evolving, (ii) newer architectures impose new programming models, and (iii) data-parallel kernels of analysis algorithms and their performance facets on different architectures are poorly understood. To address these problems, we have: (i) identified scalable data-parallel kernels of popular data analysis algorithms, (ii) implemented `Mini-Apps' of those kernels using different programming models (e.g. Map Reduce, MPI, etc.), (iii) benchmarked and validated the performance of the kernels in diverse architectures. In this paper, we discuss two of those Mini-Apps and show the execution of principal component analysis built as a workflow of the Mini-Apps. We show that Mini-Apps enable scientists to (i) write domain-specific data analysis code that scales on most HPC hardware and (ii) and offers the ability (most times with over a 10x speed-up) to analyze data sizes 100 times the size of what off-the-shelf desktop/workstations of today can handle.

Harney, John↗

On-Detector Machine Learning for Beam-Induced Background Rejection at a 10 TeV Muon Collider

A 10 TeV Muon Collider is a compelling candidate for a future energy-frontier facility, offering unprecedented opportunities to explore the fundamental laws of particle physics. Muon decays in the collider ring produce intense beam-induced background (BIB) that can overwhelm detector occupancy and exceed readout bandwidth constraints. We investigate the potential of on-detector Machine Learning for BIB rejection in the vertex detector, exploiting pixel cluster shapes to distinguish background from collision products. We study three classes of lightweight neural-network architectures, and evaluate their implementation feasibility using high-level synthesis. Selected architectures achieve 88 to 90% data reduction at 99% signal efficiency, while requiring hardware resources compatible with potential ASIC implementation. These results demonstrate the potential of performing substantial BIB rejection directly in the pixel readout, providing a strategy for meeting the tracker readout requirements at a future Muon Collider.

Abadjiev, Daniel [Chicago U.]↗

Fault Injection for TensorFlow Applications

As machine learning (ML) has seen increasing adoption in safety-critical domains (e.g., autonomous vehicles), the reliability of ML systems has also grown in importance. While prior studies have proposed techniques to enable efficient error-resilience (e.g., selective instruction duplication), a fundamental requirement for realizing these techniques is a detailed understanding of the application’s resilience. In this work, we present TensorFI 1 and TensorFI 2, high-level fault injection (FI) frameworks for TensorFlow-based applications. TensorFI 1 and 2 are able to inject both hardware and software faults in any general TensorFlow 1 and 2 program respectively. Both are configurable FI tools that are flexible, easy to use, and portable. They can be integrated into existing TensorFlow programs to assess their resilience for different fault types (e.g., bit-flips in particular operations or layers). We use the TensorFI 1 and TensorFI 2 to evaluate the resilience of 12 and 10 ML programs written in TensorFlow, including DNNs used in the autonomous vehicle domain. The results give us insights into why some of the models are more resilient. We also measure the performance overheads of the two injectors, and present 4 case studies, two for each tool, to demonstrate their utility.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Stochastic noise can be helpful for variational quantum algorithms

Saddle points constitute a crucial challenge for first-order gradient descent algorithms. In notions of classical machine learning, they are avoided, for example, by means of stochastic gradient descent methods. In this work, we provide evidence that the saddle-points problem can be naturally avoided in variational quantum algorithms by exploiting the presence of stochasticity. We prove convergence guarantees and present practical examples in numerical simulations and on quantum hardware. We argue that the natural stochasticity of variational algorithms can be beneficial for avoiding strict saddle points, i.e., those saddle points with at least one negative Hessian eigenvalue. This insight that some levels of shot noise could help is expected to add a new perspective to notions of near-term variational quantum algorithms. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Liu, Junyu↗

Device Feasibility Analysis of Multi-level FeFETs for Neuromorphic Computing

As an emerging non-volatile memory device technology, Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistors (FeFETs) can enable low-power, adaptive intelligent system design. However, device dimension and operating voltage dependent reliability issues of scaled FeFETs can ultimately lead to degraded performance in solving machine learning tasks. In this article, detailed experimental characterization of FeFET devices of different dimensions have been carried out to explicitly evaluate the non-ideal behavior in device conductance programming properties like number of programming states, cycle-to-cycle (C2C) variations, device-to-device (D2D) variations, and state retention. A hardware-aware software simulation approach has been adopted to capture the adversarial effects of the non-idealities on recognition accuracy through algorithm-level performance assessment by including them in NeuroSim, a popular neural network hardware simulator, to execute a neural network model considering all other hardware constraints. With the added non-idealities, significant accuracy degradation has been observed compared to the ideal scenarios where D2D variations play the most critical role. Thereafter, feasibility of a variation-aware training method has been evaluated to tackle the accuracy drop.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Communication-Avoiding and Memory-Constrained Sparse Matrix-Matrix Multiplication at Extreme Scale

Sparse matrix-matrix multiplication (SpGEMM) is a widely used kernel in various graph, scientific computing and machine learning algorithms. In this paper, we consider SpGEMMs performed on hundreds of thousands of processors generating trillions of nonzeros in the output matrix. Distributed SpGEMM at this extreme scale faces two key challenges: (1) high communication cost and (2) inadequate memory to generate the output. Furthermore, we address these challenges with an integrated communication-avoiding and memory-constrained SpGEMM algorithm that scales to 262,144 cores (more than 1 million hardware threads) and can multiply sparse matrices of any size as long as inputs and a fraction of output fit in the aggregated memory. As we go from 16,384 cores to 262,144 cores on a Cray XC40 supercomputer, the new SpGEMM algorithm runs 10x faster when multiplying large-scale protein-similarity matrices.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Bragg Spot Finder (BSF): a new machine-learning-aided approach to deal with spot finding for rapidly filtering diffraction pattern images

Macromolecular crystallography contributes significantly to understanding diseases and, more importantly, how to treat them by providing atomic resolution 3D structures of proteins. This is achieved by collecting X-ray diffraction images of protein crystals from important biological pathways. Spotfinders are used to detect the presence of crystals with usable data, and the spots from such crystals are the primary data used to solve the relevant structures. Having fast and accurate spot finding is essential, but recent advances in synchrotron beamlines used to generate X-ray diffraction images have brought us to the limits of what the best existing spotfinders can do. This bottleneck must be removed so spotfinder software can keep pace with the X-ray beamline hardware improvements and be able to see the weak or diffuse spots required to solve the most challenging problems encountered when working with diffraction images. In this paper, we first present Bragg Spot Detection (BSD), a large benchmark Bragg spot image dataset that contains 304 images with more than 66 000 spots. We then discuss the open source extensible U-Net-based spotfinder Bragg Spot Finder (BSF), with image pre-processing, a U-Net segmentation backbone, and post-processing that includes artifact removal and watershed segmentation. Finally, we perform experiments on the BSD benchmark and obtain results that are (in terms of accuracy) comparable to or better than those obtained with two popular spotfinder software packages ( Dozor and DIALS ), demonstrating that this is an appropriate framework to support future extensions and improvements.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Acceleration of Graph Neural Network-Based Prediction Models in Chemistry via Co-Design Optimization on Intelligence Processing Units

Atomic structure prediction and associated property calculations are the bedrock of chemical physics. Since high-fidelity ab initio modeling techniques for computing the structure and properties can be prohibitively expensive, this motivates the development of machine-learning (ML) models that make these predictions more efficiently. Training graph neural networks over large atomistic databases introduces unique computational challenges such as the need to process millions of small graphs with variable size and support communication patterns that are distinct from learning over large graphs such as social networks. We demonstrate a novel hardware-software co-design approach to scale up the training of atomistic graph neural networks (GNN) for structure and property prediction. First, to eliminate redundant computation and memory associated with alternative padding techniques and to improve throughput via minimizing communication, we formulate the effective coalescing of the batches of variable-size atomistic graphs as the bin packing problem and introduce a hardware-agnostic algorithm to pack these batches. In addition, we propose hardware-specific optimizations including a planner and vectorization for the gather-scatter operations targeted for Graphcore’s Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), as well as model-specific optimizations such as merged communication collectives and optimized softplus. Putting these all together, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed co-design approach by providing an implementation of a well-established atomistic GNN on the Graphcore IPUs. We evaluate the training performance on multiple atomistic graph databases with varying degrees of graph counts, sizes and sparsity. Here, we demonstrate that such a co-design approach can reduce the training time of atomistic GNNs and can improve the performance by up to 1.5× compared to the baseline implementation of the model on the IPUs. Additionally, we compare our IPU implementation with a Nvidia GPU-based implementation and show that our atomistic GNN implementation on the IPUs can run 1.8× faster on average compared to the execution time on the GPUs.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

AXI4MLIR: User-Driven Automatic Host Code Generation for Custom AXI-Based Accelerators

Tensor algebra operations represent an important class of algorithms used across many applications, including machine learning, scientific computing, and data analytics. As a result, the efficient generation of custom accelerators for tensor operations has received increased attention. Previous efforts have produced automated tools enabling users to prototype and explore optimized accelerators. However, little effort has been focused on the host-accelerator interaction in these tools. Efficient use of hardware accelerators requires knowledge about the accelerator's capabilities (operations, data formats, and opcode support), the host CPU microarchitecture (e.g., memory hierarchy), the host-accelerator interface, and the application's features (which code regions should be mapped onto an accelerator). Manually rewriting the original applications to facilitate improved custom accelerator mapping is an error-prone and time-consuming endeavor. To cope with this, we propose AXI4MLIR, a new framework to automatically generate and optimize the communication between the host CPU and arbitrary accelerators that implement linear algebra algorithms. AXI4MLIR extends the MLIR compiler framework to automatically generate efficient host-accelerator driver code for accelerators with AXI-based interfaces. Our compiler extensions enable automatic driver code generation while carefully considering the host's memory hierarchy and target accelerator features. To demonstrate the flexibility and utility of AXI4MLIR, we test it with diverse use cases that include different types of accelerators, tiling scenarios, and dataflow schemes. We compare our experimental results to manual implementations of host-accelerator driver code and find that our approach can reduce CPU cache references by 56% and deliver up to a 1.65x speedup.

Bohm Agostini, Nicolas↗

Performance Portability in the Exascale Computing Project: Exploration Through a Panel Series

Performance portability is a critical issue for the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) because of nontrivial architectural differences between machines available today and those expected at exascale. Many ECP project teams are working toward performance portability, and would expect to benefit from sharing lessons learned, identifying gaps, and discovering opportunities for partnerships. To facilitate this communication, the IDEAS-ECP project partnered with the three focus areas of ECP (application development, software technology, and hardware and integration), and Department of Energy computing facilities, to lead a series of panel discussions on performance portability. The panels were organized around broadly common themes of algorithmic and data locality challenges. In this article, we describe the panel series, its objectives, and perspectives from the various areas of the project. Finally, we also discuss use cases that are distinctive, as well as conclusions drawn from the collective experience of the participants.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Exponential concentration in quantum kernel methods

Kernel methods in Quantum Machine Learning (QML) have recently gained significant attention as a potential candidate for achieving a quantum advantage in data analysis. Among other attractive properties, when training a kernel-based model one is guaranteed to find the optimal model’s parameters due to the convexity of the training landscape. However, this is based on the assumption that the quantum kernel can be efficiently obtained from quantum hardware. In this work we study the performance of quantum kernel models from the perspective of the resources needed to accurately estimate kernel values. We show that, under certain conditions, values of quantum kernels over different input data can be exponentially concentrated (in the number of qubits) towards some fixed value. Thus on training with a polynomial number of measurements, one ends up with a trivial model where the predictions on unseen inputs are independent of the input data. We identify four sources that can lead to concentration including expressivity of data embedding, global measurements, entanglement and noise. For each source, an associated concentration bound of quantum kernels is analytically derived. Lastly, we show that when dealing with classical data, training a parametrized data embedding with a kernel alignment method is also susceptible to exponential concentration. Our results are verified through numerical simulations for several QML tasks. Altogether, we provide guidelines indicating that certain features should be avoided to ensure the efficient evaluation of quantum kernels and so the performance of quantum kernel methods.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Adiabatic quantum linear regression

Abstract A major challenge in machine learning is the computational expense of training these models. Model training can be viewed as a form of optimization used to fit a machine learning model to a set of data, which can take up significant amount of time on classical computers. Adiabatic quantum computers have been shown to excel at solving optimization problems, and therefore, we believe, present a promising alternative to improve machine learning training times. In this paper, we present an adiabatic quantum computing approach for training a linear regression model. In order to do this, we formulate the regression problem as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem. We analyze our quantum approach theoretically, test it on the D-Wave adiabatic quantum computer and compare its performance to a classical approach that uses the Scikit-learn library in Python. Our analysis shows that the quantum approach attains up to $${2.8 \times }$$ 2.8 × speedup over the classical approach on larger datasets, and performs at par with the classical approach on the regression error metric. The quantum approach used the D-Wave 2000Q adiabatic quantum computer, whereas the classical approach used a desktop workstation with an 8-core Intel i9 processor. As such, the results obtained in this work must be interpreted within the context of the specific hardware and software implementations of these machines.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Enhancing the Quality and Reliability of Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials through Better Reporting Practices

Recent developments in machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) have empowered even nonexperts in machine learning to train MLIPs for accelerating materials simulations. However, reproducibility and independent evaluation of presented MLIP results is hindered by a lack of clear standards in current literature. In this Perspective, we aim to provide guidance on best practices for documenting MLIP use while walking the reader through the development and deployment of MLIPs including hardware and software requirements, generating training data, training models, validating predictions, and MLIP inference. We also suggest useful plotting practices and analyses to validate and boost confidence in the deployed models. Finally, we provide a step-by-step checklist for practitioners to use directly before publication to standardize the information to be reported. Altogether, we hope that our work will encourage the reliable and reproducible use of these MLIPs, which will accelerate their ability to make a positive impact in various disciplines including materials science, chemistry, and biology, among others.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Intern Poster Session 08/13: Autonomous Nuclear Robotics: Applications in nuclear waste inspection and hot cell experiments

The nuclear industry is experiencing renewed interest in autonomous robotics, yet most deployed systems remain teleoperated with limited autonomy. This work presents two contributions toward fully autonomous nuclear robotic systems: autonomous waste inspection at the Hanford Site and an autonomous hot cell laboratory framework. Inspections of Hanford's underground waste storage tanks are performed manually at significant cost and personnel exposure. We developed a reinforcement-learning (RL) training pipeline for a custom-built inspection arm. In parallel, we are designing an autonomous laboratory framework for post-irradiation examination in hot cells at the Specimen Preparation Laboratory (SPL) that integrates computer vision, task and motion planning, hardware execution, and operator-in-the-loop control. These systems demonstrate a path toward safer, more efficient nuclear operations by reducing human exposure while maintaining rigorous human oversight at critical decision points.

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗