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A 28 nm multiply-accumulate ASIC architecture for on-chip data compression in MHz frame rate X-ray and electron pixel detectors

Modern X-ray detector systems urgently require compact, efficient, and fast data compression schemes to handle the transmission of big data from pixel arrays, enabling frame rates in the MHz regime. Here, in this work, a data compression ASIC that implements a streaming fixed-length lossy compression scheme is introduced and analyzed, proving the feasibility and benefits of on-chip compression. The compression scheme utilizes a vector matrix product logic, which performs a number of floating-point multiplications, additions, and accumulations. The logic is verified, synthesized, and shown to fit in the area resource available for the X-ray detector under study, which comprises 192 × 168 pixels each of 12-bit width, and having a total area of 20 mm× 20 mm, about 2 mm× 20 mm of which are available for the digital logic. Several system architectures, precisions, and compression ratios ranging from 100 to 250 were analyzed to pave the way for on-chip fixed-length compression (e.g., principal component analysis, singular value decomposition) and data reduction (e.g., azimuthal integration) for X-ray and electron detectors.

Data compression

A Survey on Error-Bounded Lossy Compression for Scientific Datasets

Error-bounded lossy compression has been effective in significantly reducing the data storage/transfer burden while preserving the reconstructed data fidelity very well. Many error-bounded lossy compressors have been developed for a wide range of parallel and distributed use cases for years. They are designed with distinct compression models and principles, such that each of them features particular pros and cons. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey of emerging error-bounded lossy compression techniques. The key contribution is fourfold. (1) We summarize a novel taxonomy of lossy compression into six classic models. (2) We provide a comprehensive survey of 10 commonly used compression components/modules. (3) We summarized pros and cons of 47 state-of-the-art lossy compressors and present how state-of-the-art compressors are designed based on different compression techniques. (4) We discuss how customized compressors are designed for specific scientific applications and use-cases. We believe this survey is useful to multiple communities including scientific applications, high-performance computing, lossy compression, and big data.

Error-Bounded Lossy Compression

Dynamic compression effects of H 2 ⁡O in a dynamic diamond anvil cell: Origin of metastable ice VII and its crystal growth kinetics

We report on the structural verification of metastable ice VII solidifying in the phase space of ice VI at 1.80 GPa at room temperature. Using time-resolved (TR) x-ray diffraction and TR ruby luminescence paired with high-speed microphotography utilizing a dynamic diamond anvil cell, an initial compression rate range from 0.12 to 95.84 GPa/s was explored. The solidification pressure of metastable ice VII has a potential sigmoidal dependence upon compression rate with a turnover compression rate of ∼80 GPa/s. The preferred crystallization of ice VII in the stability field of ice VI is due to the increased nucleation rate of ice VII over ice VI at 1.77 GPa that is driven by the surface energy difference between the liquid and solid phases along with the change in Gibbs free energy of solidification. The dynamic pressure-volume–compression behaviors of ice phases (VI and VII) show a lattice stiffening in both phases, especially during the compression loading. It is also found that the compression rate greatly affects the solid-solid phase transition between ice VI and VII but does not affect the liquid-solid transition between water and ice VI as much. Lastly, a third phase transition was found to occur after metastable ice VII transforms into high-density amorphous (HDA) ice, which could be a disordered hydrogen-bonded network configuration of ice VII forming out of HDA ice facilitated by the decoupling of the oxygen movement and reorientation of the H 2⁡ O molecule. These results demonstrate the complexity of a seemingly simple molecule H 2⁡ O, how it can readily change its static properties with the modification of (de)compression rate, and highlight the need to use multiple TR structural and spectroscopic probes at higher time resolutions to realize the most comprehensive understanding.

Chemical bonding

Lossy Compression: An Online Multi-Stage Technology for High-Fidelity Synchro- Waveform Measurements

Effective real-time monitoring and analysis of distributed grids necessitate the use of synchro-waveform measurements, which capture almost all high-frequency disturbances and transient phenomena. However, due to limitations in high-speed measurements and network bandwidth, it is challenging to transfer all high-fidelity synchro-waveforms losslessly and successfully. To cope with these challenges, a hybrid-based online multi-stage compression algorithm is proposed to significantly improve the compression efficiency for synchro-waveform measurements. Initially, the multiple discrete Wavelet transformation is deployed to deconstruct the waveform components. The delta encoding is further developed to decrease the magnitude. In conjunction with the Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain, the hybrid compression algorithm is implemented to achieve real-time compression for the synchro-waveform measurements. Moreover, an innovative error index that synergizes the time and frequency domain error and correlation is formulated to evaluate the waveform distortion. By integrating compression ratio, suitable parameters can be optimally selected. Finally, the simulation, laboratory experiments, as well as field tests across a spectrum of sampling frequencies and time intervals are conducted to substantiate the efficacy of the proposed method. Here, the outcomes demonstrated that a compression ratio of approximately 15.5 and 17.83 can be reached for 0.5 s and 1 s data under both offline and online scenarios, which equates to a substantial 93.5% to 94.39% reduction in data storage requirements.

High-fidelity synchro-waveform measurements

Enhancing ZFP: A Statistical Approach to Understanding and Reducing Error Bias in a Lossy Floating-Point Compression Algorithm

The amount of data generated and gathered in scientific simulations and data collection applications is continuously growing, putting mounting pressure on storage and bandwidth concerns. A means of reducing such issues is data compression; but, lossless data compression is typically ineffective when applied to floating-point data. Thus, users tend to apply a lossy data compressor, which allows for small deviations from the original data. It is essential to understand how the error from lossy compression impacts the accuracy of the data analytics. Thus, we must analyze not only the compression properties but the error as well. In this paper, we provide a statistical analysis of the error caused by ZFP compression, a state-of-the-art, lossy compression algorithm explicitly designed for floating-point data. We show that the error is indeed biased and propose simple modifications to the algorithm to neutralize the bias and further reduce the resulting error.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

Variable rate neural compression for sparse detector data

Particle colliders produce data at extraordinary rates, posing major challenges for transmission and storage. High-throughput compression algorithms are therefore essential. In the sPHENIX experiment taking data at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, a time projection chamber records three-dimensional (3D) particle trajectories that are highly sparse, making conventional learning-free lossy compression ineffective. Convolutional neural networks have surpassed traditional methods in compression ratio and accuracy. However, they fail to exploit sparsity for efficiency. To address these gaps, we present BCAE-VS, a bicephalous convolutional autoencoder with variable compression ratio for sparse data, which adapts compression to input complexity through key-point identification and sparse convolution. BCAE-VS achieves higher accuracy and compression ratios than prior neural approaches while being orders of magnitude smaller. Moreover, its throughput increases with sparsity—a property not observed in other methods. Although it was developed for collider experiments, BCAE-VS readily extends to other sparse data domains, such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensing and 3D microscopy.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS

Effect of pressure cycling and compression rate on the bcc-hcp transition in an FeNi alloy

Here, we investigate the body-centered cubic (bcc) to hexagonal close-packed (hcp) phase transition in Fe-10wt. %Ni alloy, combining pressure cycling and fast compression with time-resolved synchrotron x-ray diffraction in a dynamic diamond anvil cell. Three pressure cycles were conducted with compression rates ranging from 0.1 to nearly 10 3 GPa/s. During the first cycle with the slowest compression, the observed orientations in the bcc and hcp phases are consistent with the Burgers mechanism, followed by c-axis rotation of the hcp phase consistent with {$10$ $\bar{1}2$} twinning. During the following cycles with fast compression at 10 2 –10 3 GPa/s, the hcp phase exhibits negligible c-axis rotation with a nearly constant c/a ratio of ∼1.61 up to ∼30 GPa, indicating suppression of plastic deformation (especially, twinning) due to sample confinement from the gasket. Notably, the onset pressure of the transition decreases with additional pressure cycling and faster compression, which normally leads to over-pressurization. This suggests that defects or shear induced from the pressure cycling reduces the transition kinetics even during fast compression. These insights into the deformation and transition behavior in an FeNi alloy under multiple dynamic loading cycles can offer guidance for future design of advanced structural alloys and improve our understanding of planetary core processes.

FeNi alloy

The molecular architecture distinctions between compression, opposite and normal wood of Pinus radiata

In gymnosperms compression wood is a specialised type of structural cell wall formed in response to biomechanical stresses. The differences in terms of gross structure, ultrastructure and chemistry are well-known. However, the differences between compression wood, normal wood, and opposite wood regarding the arrangements and interactions of the various polymers and water within their cell walls still needs to be established. The analysis of 13 C-labelled Pinus radiata by solid-state NMR spectroscopy and other complementary techniques revealed several new aspects of compression and opposite wood molecular architecture. Compared to normal wood, compression wood has a lower water content, its overall nanoporosity is reduced, and the water and matrix polymers have a lower molecular mobility. Galactan, which is a specific marker of compression wood, is broadly distributed within the cell wall, disordered, and not aligned with cellulose, and is found to be in close proximity to xylan. Dehydroabietic acid (a resin acid) is immobilised and close to the H-lignin only in compression wood. Although the overall molecular mobility of normal wood and opposite wood are similar, opposite wood has different arabinose conformations, a large increase in the amount of chain ends, contains significantly more galactan and has additional unassigned mobile components highlighting the different molecular arrangement of cell wall polymers in opposite and normal wood.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

High-compression implosions based on high density carbon ablator using modified drive and capsule dopant profiles

Laser-driven inertial fusion experiments have, for the first time, achieved a target gain greater than unity in a laboratory setting [Abu-Shawareb et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 065102 (2024)]. Despite this breakthrough, the burn-up fraction remains limited to about one-fourth of ideal estimates due to insufficient areal density, highlighting the potential for greater gains through enhanced compression. In our previous work, we demonstrated record-high compression of stagnated fuel in indirectly driven implosions using high-density carbon ablators. This was achieved by combining a continuous ramped pulse drive with a modified ablator dopant profile, which reduced mixing at the fuel–ablator interface and improved stability [Tommasini et al., Phys. Rev. Res. 5, L042034 (2023)]. Based on this foundation, the study presented here investigates the limits of compression achievable by combining the continuous ramped pulse drive with different dopant profiles to further minimize unstable interfaces and gradient discontinuities, thereby reducing fuel–ablator mixing. Our results demonstrate that the continuous ramped pulse consistently outperforms designs based on 3-shock drive pulses across all ablator profiles studied, with compression showing only a relatively modest dependence on dopant configurations that reduce the number of interfaces or eliminate discontinuities in the dopant gradient profile. Sub-scale experiments using the continuous ramped pulse achieved compression levels exceeding those of full-scale “HyE” implosions [Kritcher et al., Phys. Plasmas 28, 072706 (2021)] at similar adiabat, anticipating significant performance gains with increased scale, as supported by models and simulations. These findings underscore the critical role of the continuous ramped pulse in reducing mix and achieving improved compression. They also provide a foundation for future large-scale experiments to test the continuous ramped pulse design on deuterium–tritium fuel in the burn-wave propagation regime, leveraging the most effective combinations of continuous ramped pulse and dopant profiles identified in this study.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY

Scientific Data Compression for Large Scale Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Simulations

This Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and General Electric (GE) investigated methods for reducing the size of large computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation datasets using scientific data compression techniques. The work focused on adapting the MultiGrid Adaptive Reduction of Data (MGARD) compression framework and integrating it with high-performance I/O and visualization tools used in CFD workflows. MGARD uses hierarchical multilevel decomposition to enable error-controlled compression of floating-point scientific data while preserving quantities of interest. During the project, MGARD compression was integrated with the ADIOS I/O framework and visualization tools such as ParaView to enable efficient storage, transfer, and analysis of simulation data. The collaboration also explored approaches for improving compression performance for CFD data defined on unstructured meshes. Results demonstrate that scientific data compression can significantly reduce storage requirements and improve data management for large-scale CFD simulations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

Massive compression for high data rate macromolecular crystallography (HDRMX): impact on diffraction data and subsequent structural analysis

New higher-count-rate, integrating, large-area X-ray detectors with framing rates as high as 17400 images per second are beginning to be available. These will soon be used for specialized macromolecular crystallography experiments but will require optimal lossy compression algorithms to enable systems to keep up with data throughput. Some information may be lost. Can we minimize this loss with acceptable impact on structural information? To explore this question, we have considered several approaches: summing short sequences of images, binning to create the effect of larger pixels, use of JPEG-2000 lossy wavelet-based compression, and use of Hcompress, which is a Haar-wavelet-based lossy compression borrowed from astronomy. We also explore the effect of the combination of summing, binning, and Hcompress or JPEG-2000. In each of these last two methods one can specify approximately how much one wants the result to be compressed from the starting file size. These provide particularly effective lossy compressions that retain essential information for structure solution from Bragg reflections.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION

An Algorithm for Atom-Centered Lossy Compression of the Atomic Orbital Basis in Density Functional Theory Calculations

Large atomic-orbital (AO) basis sets of at least triple and preferably quadruple-ζ (QZ) size are required to adequately converge Kohn–Sham density functional theory (DFT) calculations toward the complete basis set limit. However, incrementing the cardinal number by one nearly doubles the AO basis dimension, and the computational cost scales as the cube of the AO dimension, so this is very computationally demanding. Here, in this work, we develop and test a threshold-based natural atomic orbital (NAO) scheme in which ϵ-NAOs are obtained as eigenfunctions of atomic blocks of the density matrix in a one-center orthogonalized representation. This enables compression of the AO basis that is optimal for a given threshold, 10 –ϵ , by discarding NAOs with occupation numbers below that threshold. Extensive pilot test calculations using the Hartree–Fock functional and taking the converged density matrix as input suggest that a threshold of 10 –5 can yield a compression factor (ratio of AO to compressed ϵ-NAO dimension) between 2.5 and 4.5 for the QZ pc-3 basis. The errors in relative energies are typically less than 0.1 kcal/mol when the compressed basis is used instead of the uncompressed basis. Between 10 and 100 times smaller errors (i.e., usually less than 0.01 kcal/mol) can be obtained with a threshold 10 –7 , while the compression factor is typically between 2 and 2.5.

basis sets

System and Machine Learning-Guided Materials Design for High-Pressure Hydrogen Compression

Cost-effective and reliable hydrogen compression remains a challenging barrier in the widespread adoption of hydrogen as an energy carrier. The prevailing technology of mechanical compression suffers from several drawbacks, some of which can be addressed by nonmechanical compression strategies (e.g., electrochemical or metal hydride-based thermal compression). Thermally driven metal hydride compression strategies typically rely on multistage metal hydride-based compressors; however, discovering or optimizing low-stability metal hydrides that can pressurize hydrogen upward of 1000 bar is difficult, both with respect to computational predictions and experimental validation. Here, in this study, we (1) demonstrate that simple machine learning-derived design rules can inform the rational design of alloying strategies yielding low-stability hydrides, (2) validate their experimental pressure–composition–temperature (PCT) isotherms up to 875 bar, and (3) utilize a dynamic system-level model of a metal hydride compressor design to evaluate their performance under realistic operating conditions. Importantly, this analysis yields predicted operational efficiencies of both 2-stage (90–875 bar) and 3-stage (20–875 bar) metal hydride compressors to enable further evaluation of this technology and its techno-economic outlook.

alloy optimization

What to Support When You’re Compressing

Over the last nearly 20 years, lossy compression has become an essential aspect of HPC applications’ data pipelines, allowing them to overcome limitations in storage capacity and bandwidth and, in some cases, increase computational throughput and capacity. However, with the adoption of lossy compression comes the requirement to assess and control the impact lossy compression has on scientific outcomes. In this work, we take a major step forward in describing the state of practice and by characterizing workloads. We examine applications’ needs and compressors’ capabilities across 9 different supercomputing application domains. We present 24 takeaways that provide best practices for applications, operational impacts for facilities achieving compressed data, and gaps in application needs not addressed by production compressors that point towards opportunities for future compression research.

Error-Bounded Lossy Compression

Compression rate effects on the Bi-III stability field in dynamic diamond anvil cell XFEL studies of bismuth

This study aims to resolve conflicting observations of bismuth’s high-pressure phase transitions across static, intermediate, and shock compression regimes. We probed its high-pressure structural sequence using the dynamic diamond anvil cell with and time-resolved X-ray diffraction with microsecond resolution at an X-ray free-electron laser. At room temperature and pressures up to 20 gigapascals, bismuth evolves through the same structural sequence previously identified under static compression. However, the transformation behavior differs in important ways under dynamic loading. In particular, the transition from the incommensurate intermediate-pressure phase to the high symmetry high pressure phase begins at pressures about 2 to 4 gigapascals lower than in static experiments, and the onset of this transformation depends on the compression rate. As a result, the stability field of the intermediate-pressure phase is reduced under rapid compression. Our results suggest that at sufficiently fast loading rates the intermediate phase may be bypassed entirely, consistent with previous shock-compression observations.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND

First Demonstration of Improved Fusion Yield with Increased Compression through Reduced Adiabat in Inertial Confinement Fusion Experiments at the National Ignition Facility

Recent advancements in indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have achieved a significant milestone by demonstrating target gains greater than one, yet future applications necessitate much higher target gains. One approach to achieving improved implosion performance is to pursue increased fuel compression via a lowered implosion adiabat. Experiments have been performed testing a reduced adiabat by introducing small changes to the drive laser pulse shape and the resulting shock timing for an existing implosion design at 1.9 MJ laser drive with near-ignition performance (experiment N210808). Experiments using the updated design demonstrate, for the very first time, increased compression and fusion yield in ICF implosions on the NIF by using a lower fuel adiabat, and increased compression with a reduced adiabat in high-density carbon ablators. Compared to the previously best-performing experiment with a laser energy of 1.9 MJ, these experiments exhibit increases of up to 80% and 14% in nuclear fusion yield and fuel compression, respectively, and with repeatable performance. Further, it is the only implosion design to have achieved a target gain exceeding one with a laser energy of less than 2 MJ. These findings highlight the efficacy of reduced adiabat designs in achieving higher compression and fusion yields, offering a promising pathway for future ICF applications. In conclusion, this Letter not only addresses a long-standing question in ICF but also paves the way for achieving higher target gains with optimized implosion strategies.

Hohenberger, M. [Lawrence Livermore National Labor

Identifying Outliers in AI-based Image Compression

Image compression using artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly prevalent across various fields, including scientific research. Scientific instruments can generate hundreds of images per second, and effectively compressing these images with high compression ratios is crucial for facilitating scientific discoveries. However, automatically detecting outlier cases, where compression may not have succeeded or where interesting scientific phenomena are present, poses a significant challenge. To address this, we have developed a methodology based on unsupervised machine learning techniques for detecting outlier compressed images. This methodology utilizes metrics such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index measure (SSIM), structural texture similarity index measure (STSIM), and deep image and structural texture similarity index (DISTS). We have evaluated our methodology on several unlabeled datasets, including microscopy and x-ray images, and have successfully identified multiple outlier images using our proposed approach. Furthermore, our approach has enabled us to identify image semantics that are valuable for post-experiment analysis by scientists.

Data Analysis

Shifting Between Compute and Memory Bounds: A Compression-Enabled Roofline Model

In the evolving landscape of high-performance computing, especially to fight the end of Moore’s Law and Dennard’s Scaling, the ability to shift between compute-bound and memory-bound states is critical for enhancing adaptability and flexibility to diverse system and domain-specific architectures. Such capability is vital for optimizing performance across distinguished hardware configurations, such as accelerators, memory hierarchies, and cache systems. Despite that ad hoc optimization techniques, such as compressed/approximate computation, have been enabled for compute-/data-intensive computing for improved performance in distinct hardware settings, there lacks an understanding of 1) the rational behind performance improvement; 2) capability of different optimizations; 3) what optimization to respond to specific computational and memory demands. This work proposes a compression-enabled roofline model to facilitate this adaptability with data compression techniques to balance and transform between computational and memory demands. This model enables applications to adjust in response to the specific strengths and limitations of the underlying hardware and system to optimize resource utilization. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated with matrix multiplication kernels on different input sizes, with turning on/off various compression techniques, including 1) low-precision floating point; 2) sparse matrix formulation; and 3) compressed arrays with ZFP. By reducing memory transfer volumes and cache misses and increasing data locality and computational intensity through compression, the specific roofline model can transform between compute and memory bounds to align more efficiently with system capabilities. This advancement not only improves overall performance but also maximizes adaptability in diverse computing environments.

Naraparaju, Ramasoumya [University of Washington]