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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 289 records · Page 16

Generation of a Strong Parallel Electric Field and Embedded Electron Jet in the Exhaust of Moderate Guide Field Reconnection

Abstract Magnetospheric Multiscale observed an extended current layer concurrent with a strong parallel electric field. The current layer is embedded in the reconnection exhaust and is consistent with an extended magnetized jet expected in roughly symmetric moderate guide field reconnection. The strong parallel electric field observed at the jet balances a strong gradient in the parallel electron pressure caused by a transition between magnetized electrons with T e ‖ > T e ⊥ on one side of the jet and demagnetized, roughly isotropic electrons across the thin current layer. Simulation results show how this transition can occur and how the associated electron pressure gradients in Ohm's law balance the parallel electric field.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Independent and parallel evolution of new genes by gene duplication in two origins of C4 photosynthesis provides new insight into the mechanism of phloem loading in C4 species

C4 photosynthesis is considered one of the most remarkable examples of evolutionary convergence in eukaryotes. However, it is unknown whether the evolution of C4 photosynthesis required the evolution of new genes. Genome-wide gene-tree species-tree reconciliation of seven monocot species that span two origins of C4 photosynthesis revealed that there was significant parallelism in the duplication and retention of genes coincident with the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in these lineages. Specifically, 21 orthologous genes were duplicated and retained independently in parallel at both C4 origins. Analysis of this gene cohort revealed that the set of parallel duplicated and retained genes is enriched for genes that are preferentially expressed in bundle sheath cells, the cell type in which photosynthesis was activated during C4 evolution. Moreover, functional analysis of the cohort of parallel duplicated genes identified SWEET-13 as a potential key transporter in the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in grasses, and provides new insight into the mechanism of phloem loading in these C4 species.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A Reduced-Order Aggregated Model for Parallel Inverter Systems with Virtual Oscillator Control

This paper introduces a reduced-order aggregated model for parallel-connected inverters controlled with virtual oscillator control (VOC). The premise of VOC is to modulate inverter dynamics to emulate those of nonlinear oscillators with the goal of realizing a stable ac microgrid in the absence of communication, synchronous generation, or a stiff grid. To obtain a reduced-order model for a system of parallel-connected inverters with VOC, we first formulate a set of scaling laws that describe how the controller and filter parameters of a given inverter depend on its voltage and power rating. Subsequently, we show that N parallel inverters which adhere to this scaling law can be modeled with the same structure and hence the same computational burden of the model of a single inverter. The proposed aggregate model is experimentally validated on a system of three parallel inverters with heterogeneous power ratings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Monte Carlo-Based Method for Parallelizing Quasi-Static Time-Series Power System Simulations: Preprint

Both commercial and open source power system simulators run quasi-static time-series (QSTS) simulations sequentially. For yearlong high-resolution load profiles this sequential execution of load flows incurs long computation times. Parallelizing QSTS simulations on multiple processors is one possible way to reduce the computation time. Parallelization however introduces errors in the simulation results as the initial state of the system at the beginning of each parallelized time period is not known. In this work a Monte Carlo-based approach has been proposed to estimate the initial state of the system for each parallel simulation run to mitigate the errors in the final results. Classical sequential QSTS simulation is the chosen base case against which all other methods have been compared. Results presented in this paper show that the proposed method improves the simulation results considerably. This paper also discusses possible sensitivities of the proposed method to a number of tunable parameters. Additionally, sensitivity analysis results for a number of parameters have also been presented in the results section.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

An Effective Current Balancing Method for Inverters With Paralleled Silicon Carbide Power Modules

Silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET has many superior characteristics in high power applications. Paralleling the SiC devices is an effective approach to increase the current capacity of the system, which also leads to current sharing issues. In this article, both transient and steady-state current sharing issues are studied for the high-power grid-tied inverters with paralleled SiC modules with an effective current balancing strategy proposed to address both issues simultaneously. The steady-state imbalance current due to the parameter mismatch is suppressed by the self-inductance of power cables used for paralleling connection. With the elimination of steady-state imbalance current, the transient imbalance current sensing is much simplified and can be realized by using low-cost current sensors. With the sensed imbalance current, a closed-loop control approach is proposed to adjust the modulation reference signal for each module to mitigate the remaining transient imbalance current. Furthermore, the proposed method is straightforward to implement with enhanced compatibility and flexibility compared to existing methods. Experimental studies are performed using inverters with 2 and 4 power modules paralleled in each phase to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Computing Maximum Cardinality Matchings in Parallel on Bipartite Graphs via Tree-Grafting

It is difficult to obtain high performance when computing matchings on parallel processors because matching algorithms explicitly or implicitly search for paths in the graph, and when these paths become long, there is little concurrency. In spite of this limitation, we present a new algorithm and its shared-memory parallelization that achieves good performance and scalability in computing maximum cardinality matchings in bipartite graphs. This algorithm searches for augmenting paths via specialized breadth-first searches (BFS) from multiple source vertices, hence creating more parallelism than single source algorithms. Algorithms that employ multiple-source searches cannot discard a search tree once no augmenting path is discovered from the tree, unlike algorithms that rely on single-source searches. We describe a novel tree-grafting method that eliminates most of the redundant edge traversals resulting from this property of multiple-source searches. We also employ the recent direction-optimizing BFS algorithm as a subroutine to discover augmenting paths faster. Our algorithm compares favorably with the current best algorithms in terms of the number of edges traversed, the average augmenting path length, and the number of iterations. Here, we provide a proof of correctness for our algorithm. Our NUMA-aware implementation is scalable to 80 threads of an Intel multiprocessor and to 240 threads on an Intel Knights Corner coprocessor. On average, our parallel algorithm runs an order of magnitude faster than the fastest algorithms available. The performance improvement is more significant on graphs with small matching number.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The Integrated Reference Region Analysis for Parallel DFIGs’ Interfacing Inductors

Although the traditional design of doubly-fed induction generators (DFIGs)’ interfacing inductors consider the peak ripple of the grid-side converter (GSC)’s output current, it does not consider the inductors’ impact on DFIGs’ smallsignal stability. Located in series between the GSC and the stator, the inappropriate selection of the interfacing inductor can easily result to system instability. Therefore, this paper first proposes the integrated reference region analysis for small wind farm's interfacing inductors to improve the traditional design method. Firstly, a new detailed parallel DFIGs’ smallsignal model that considers output currents’ coupling is built in d-q coordinate system with state-space approach. The model focuses on representing the operating states of parallel DFIGs in wind farm. Secondly, the linearized state-space matrix of parallel DFIGs is decomposed into nominal-value matrix and location matrix. Considering the traditional design requirements, the integrated reference region for interfacing inductor is proposed through spectral radius and bialternate matrix sum (BMS). Furthermore, it can provide better guidance for parameter selecting and stabilization method researches. Finally, the simulation and experimental results show that the proposed integrated reference region for parallel DFIGs’ interfacing inductors is accurate and instructive.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

SU-F-SPS-09: Parallel MC Kernel Calculations for VMAT Plan Improvement

Purpose: Adding kernels (small perturbations in leaf positions) to the existing apertures of VMAT control points may improve plan quality. We investigate the calculation of kernel doses using a parallelized Monte Carlo (MC) method. Methods: A clinical prostate VMAT DICOM plan was exported from Eclipse. An arbitrary control point and leaf were chosen, and a modified MLC file was created, corresponding to the leaf position offset by 0.5cm. The additional dose produced by this 0.5 cm × 0.5 cm kernel was calculated using the DOSXYZnrc component module of BEAMnrc. A range of particle history counts were run (varying from 3 × 10{sup 6} to 3 × 10{sup 7}); each job was split among 1, 10, or 100 parallel processes. A particle count of 3 × 10{sup 6} was established as the lower range because it provided the minimal accuracy level. Results: As expected, an increase in particle counts linearly increases run time. For the lowest particle count, the time varied from 30 hours for the single-processor run, to 0.30 hours for the 100-processor run. Conclusion: Parallel processing of MC calculations in the EGS framework significantly decreases time necessary for each kernel dose calculation. Particle counts lower than 1 × 10{sup 6} have too large of an error to output accurate dose for a Monte Carlo kernel calculation. Future work will investigate increasing the number of parallel processes and optimizing run times for multiple kernel calculations.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Parallel-In-Time Multigrid with Adaptive Spatial Coarsening for The Linear Advection and Inviscid Burgers Equations

We apply a multigrid reduction-in-time (MGRIT) algorithm to hyperbolic partial differential equations in one spatial dimension. This study is motivated by the observation that sequential time-stepping is a computational bottleneck when attempting to implement highly concurrent algorithms; thus parallel-in-time methods are desirable. MGRIT adds parallelism by using a hierarchy of successively coarser temporal levels to accelerate the solution on the finest level. In the case of explicit time-stepping, spatial coarsening is a suitable approach to ensure that stability conditions are satisfied on all levels, and it may be useful for implicit time-stepping by producing cheaper multigrid cycles. Unfortunately, uniform spatial coarsening results in extremely slow convergence when the wave speed is near zero, even if only locally. We present an adaptive spatial coarsening strategy that addresses this issue for the variable coefficient linear advection equation and the inviscid Burgers equation using first-order explicit or implicit time-stepping methods. Serial numerical results show this method offers significant improvements over uniform coarsening and is convergent for the inviscid Burgers equation with and without shocks. Parallel scaling tests on up to 128K cores indicate that run-time improvements over serial time-stepping strategies are possible when spatial parallelism alone saturates, and that scalability is robust for oscillatory solutions which change on the scale of the grid spacing.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Parallel Randomized Tucker Decomposition Algorithms

The Tucker tensor decomposition is a natural extension of the singular value decomposition (SVD) to multiway data. Here, we propose to accelerate Tucker tensor decomposition algorithms by using randomization and parallelization. We present two algorithms that scale to large data and many processors, significantly reduce both computation and communication cost compared to previous deterministic and randomized approaches, and obtain nearly the same approximation errors. The key idea in our algorithms is to perform randomized sketches with Kronecker-structured random matrices, which reduces computation compared to unstructured matrices and can be implemented using a fundamental tensor computational kernel. We provide probabilistic error analysis of our algorithms and implement a new parallel algorithm for the structured randomized sketch. Our experimental results demonstrate that our combination of randomization and parallelization achieves accurate Tucker decompositions much faster than alternative approaches. We observe up to a 16X speedup over the fastest deterministic parallel implementation on 3D simulation data.

Tucker decompositions↗

Enabling Scalability-Sensitive Speculative Parallelization for FSM Computations

In this work, we conduct a systematic scalability analysis for speculative FSM parallelization. Unlike many other parallelizations which can be modeled by the classic Amdahl’s law or its simple extensions, the scalability of speculative FSM parallelization is challenging to analyze due to the non-deterministic nature of speculation and the cost variations of misspeculation. To address these challenges, this work introduces a spectrum of scalability models that are customized to the properties of specific FSMs and the underlying architecture. ŒThe models, for the first time, precisely capture the scalability of speculative parallelization for different FSM computations, and clearly show the existence of a “sweet spot” in terms of the number of cores.

Scalability analysis, modeling, Speculative parall↗

Parsl: Pervasive Parallel Programming in Python

High-level programming languages such as Python are increasingly used to provide intuitive interfaces to libraries written in lower-level languages and for assembling applications from various components. This migration towards orchestration rather than implementation, coupled with the growing need for parallel computing (e.g., due to big data and the end of Moore's law), necessitates rethinking how parallelism is expressed in programs. Here, we present Parsl, a parallel scripting library that augments Python with simple, scalable, and flexible constructs for encoding parallelism. These constructs allow Parsl to construct a dynamic dependency graph of components that it can then execute efficiently on one or many processors. Parsl is designed for scalability, with an extensible set of executors tailored to different use cases, such as low-latency, high-throughput, or extreme-scale execution. We show, via experiments on the Blue Waters supercomputer, that Parsl executors can allow Python scripts to execute components with as little as 5 ms of overhead, scale to more than 250000 workers across more than 8000 nodes, and process upward of 1200 tasks per second. Other Parsl features simplify the construction and execution of composite programs by supporting elastic provisioning and scaling of infrastructure, fault-tolerant execution, and integrated wide-area data management. We show that these capabilities satisfy the needs of many-task, interactive, online, and machine learning applications in fields such as biology, cosmology, and materials science.

parallel programming↗

Development of Parallel Computing Framework to Enhance Radiation Transport Code Capabilities for Rare Isotope Beam Facility Design

A parallel computing framework has been developed to use with general-purpose radiation transport codes. The framework was implemented as a C++ module that uses MPI for message passing. It is intended to be used with older radiation transport codes implemented in Fortran77, Fortran 90 or C. The module is significantly independent of radiation transport codes it can be used with, and is connected to the codes by means of a number of interface functions. The framework was developed and tested in conjunction with the MARS15 code. It is possible to use it with other codes such as PHITS, FLUKA and MCNP after certain adjustments. Besides the parallel computing functionality, the framework offers a checkpoint facility that allows restarting calculations with a saved checkpoint file. The checkpoint facility can be used in single process calculations as well as in the parallel regime. The framework corrects some of the known problems with the scheduling and load balancing found in the original implementations of the parallel computing functionality in MARS15 and PHITS. The framework can be used efficiently on homogeneous systems and networks of workstations, where the interference from the other users is possible.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Parallel Algorithms and Patterns

This is a powerpoint presentation on parallel algorithms and patterns. A parallel algorithm is a well-defined, step-by-step computational procedure that emphasizes concurrency to solve a problem. Examples of problems include: Sorting, searching, optimization, matrix operations. A parallel pattern is a computational step in a sequence of independent, potentially concurrent operations that occurs in diverse scenarios with some frequency. Examples are: Reductions, prefix scans, ghost cell updates. We only touch on parallel patterns in this presentation. It really deserves its own detailed discussion which Gabe Rockefeller would like to develop.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Parallel Algorithms for the Exascale Era

New parallel algorithms are needed to reach the Exascale level of parallelism with millions of cores. We look at some of the research developed by students in projects at LANL. The research blends ideas from the early days of computing while weaving in the fresh approach brought by students new to the field of high performance computing. We look at reproducibility of global sums and why it is important to parallel computing. Next we look at how the concept of hashing has led to the development of more scalable algorithms suitable for next-generation parallel computers. Nearly all of this work has been done by undergraduates and published in leading scientific journals.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

penORNL: a parallel Monte Carlo photon and electron transport package using PENELOPE

The parallel Monte Carlo photon and electron transport code package penORNL was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to enable advanced scanning electron microscope (SEM) simulations on high-performance computing systems. This paper discusses the implementations, capabilities and parallel performance of the new code package. penORNL uses PENELOPE for its physics calculations and provides all available PENELOPE features to the users, as well as some new features including source definitions specifically developed for SEM simulations, a pulse-height tally capability for detailed simulations of gamma and x-ray detectors, and a modified interaction forcing mechanism to enable accurate energy deposition calculations. The parallel performance of penORNL was extensively tested with several model problems, and very good linear parallel scaling was observed with up to 512 processors. penORNL, along with its new features, will be available for SEM simulations upon completion of the new pulse-height tally implementation.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Development Of A Parallel Performance Model For The THOR Neutral Particle Transport Code

The THOR neutral particle transport code enables simulation of complex geometries for various problems from reactor simulations to nuclear non-proliferation. It is undergoing a thorough V&V requiring computational efficiency. This has motivated various improvements including angular parallelization, outer iteration acceleration, and development of peripheral tools. For guiding future improvements to the code’s efficiency, better characterization of its parallel performance is useful. A parallel performance model (PPM) can be used to evaluate the benefits of modifications and to identify performance bottlenecks. Using INL’s Falcon HPC, the PPM development incorporates an evaluation of network communication behavior over heterogeneous links and a functional characterization of the per-cell/angle/group runtime of each major code component. After evaluating several possible sources of variability, this resulted in a communication model and a parallel portion model. The former’s accuracy is bounded by the variability of communication on Falcon while the latter has an error on the order of 1%.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A Reduced-Order Aggregated Model for Parallel Inverter Systems with Virtual Oscillator Control: Preprint

This paper introduces a reduced-order aggregated model for parallel-connected inverters controlled with virtual oscillator control (VOC). The premise of VOC is to modulate inverter dynamics to emulate those of nonlinear oscillators with the goal of realizing a stable ac microgrid in the absence of communication, synchronous generation, or a stiff grid. To obtain a reduced-order model for a system of parallel-connected inverters with VOC, we first formulate a set of scaling laws that describe how the controller and filter parameters of a given inverter depend on its voltage and power rating. Subsequently, we show that N parallel inverters which adhere to this scaling law can be modeled with the same structure and hence the same computational burden of the model of a single inverter. The proposed aggregate model is experimentally validated on a system of three parallel inverters with heterogeneous power ratings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗