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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 433 records · Page 24

Heterogeneous Machine Learning on High Performance Computing for End to End Driving of Autonomous Vehicles

Current artificial intelligence techniques for end to end driving of autonomous vehicles typically rely on a single form of learning or training processes along with a corresponding dataset or simulation environment. Relatively speaking, success has been shown for a variety of learning modalities in which it can be shown that the machine can successfully “drive” a vehicle. However, the realm of real-world driving extends significantly beyond the realm of limited test environments for machine training. This creates an enormous gap in capability between these two realms. With their superior neural network structures and learning capabilities, humans can be easily trained within a short period of time to proceed from limited test environments to real world driving. For machines though, this gap is guarded by at least two challenges: 1) machine learning techniques remain brittle and unable to generalize to a wide range of scenarios, and 2) effective training data that enhances generalization and generates the desired driving behavior. Further, each challenge can be computationally intensive on its own thereby exasperating the gap. Moreover, is has not yet been shown that a single form of learning or training is capable of addressing a large range of scenarios. As a result, solving the first challenge does not inherently solve the second and vice versa. The work described here discusses an approach to address the first challenge that would also provide a foundation for solving the second. Our approach utilizes a combination of conditional imitation learning with a static dataset, reinforcement learning with a simulation environment, and high-performance computing to train a neural network. As a result, this reduces the “time to solution” from to the existing techniques for autonomous driving and provides an extensible framework to address the second key challenge.

autonomous vehicles↗

Learning broken symmetries with approximate invariance

Recognizing symmetries in data allows for significant boosts in neural network training, which is especially important where training data are limited. In many cases, however, the exact underlying symmetry is present only in an idealized dataset, and is broken in actual data, due to asymmetries in the detector, or varying response resolution as a function of particle momentum. Standard approaches, such as data augmentation or equivariant networks fail to represent the nature of the full, broken symmetry, effectively overconstraining the response of the neural network. We propose a learning model which balances the generality and asymptotic performance of unconstrained networks with the rapid learning of constrained networks. This is achieved through a dual-subnet structure, where one network is constrained by the symmetry and the other is not, along with a learned symmetry factor. In a simplified toy example that demonstrates violation of Lorentz invariance, our model learns as rapidly as symmetry constrained networks but escapes its performance limitations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

E(n)-Equivariant cartesian tensor message passing interatomic potential

Machine learning potential (MLP) has been a popular topic in recent years for its capability to replace expensive first-principles calculations in some large systems. Meanwhile, message passing networks have gained significant attention due to their remarkable accuracy, and a wave of message passing networks based on Cartesian coordinates has emerged. However, the information of the node in these models is usually limited to scalars, and vectors. In this work, we propose High-order Tensor message Passing interatomic Potential (HotPP), an E(n) equivariant message passing neural network that extends the node embedding and message to an arbitrary order tensor. By performing some basic equivariant operations, high order tensors can be coupled very simply and thus the model can make direct predictions of high-order tensors such as dipole moments and polarizabilities without any modifications. The tests in several datasets show that HotPP not only achieves high accuracy in predicting target properties, but also successfully performs tasks such as calculating phonon spectra, infrared spectra, and Raman spectra, demonstrating its potential as a tool for future research.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Disentangling direct from indirect relationships in association networks

Networks are vital tools for understanding and modeling interactions in complex systems in science and engineering, and direct and indirect interactions are pervasive in all types of networks. However, quantitatively disentangling direct and indirect relationships in networks remains a formidable task. Here, we present a framework, called iDIRECT (Inference of Direct and Indirect Relationships with Effective Copula-based Transitivity), for quantitatively inferring direct dependencies in association networks. Using copula-based transitivity, iDIRECT eliminates/ameliorates several challenging mathematical problems, including ill-conditioning, self-looping, and interaction strength overflow. With simulation data as benchmark examples, iDIRECT showed high prediction accuracies. Application of iDIRECT to reconstruct gene regulatory networks in Escherichia coli also revealed considerably higher prediction power than the best-performing approaches in the DREAM5 (Dialogue on Reverse Engineering Assessment and Methods project, #5) Network Inference Challenge. In addition, applying iDIRECT to highly diverse grassland soil microbial communities in response to climate warming showed that the iDIRECT-processed networks were significantly different from the original networks, with considerably fewer nodes, links, and connectivity, but higher relative modularity. Further analysis revealed that the iDIRECT-processed network was more complex under warming than the control and more robust to both random and target species removal ( P < 0.001). As a general approach, iDIRECT has great advantages for network inference, and it should be widely applicable to infer direct relationships in association networks across diverse disciplines in science and engineering.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A Single‐Ion Conducting Borate Network Polymer as a Viable Quasi‐Solid Electrolyte for Lithium Metal Batteries

Abstract Lithium‐ion batteries have remained a state‐of‐the‐art electrochemical energy storage technology for decades now, but their energy densities are limited by electrode materials and conventional liquid electrolytes can pose significant safety concerns. Lithium metal batteries featuring Li metal anodes, solid polymer electrolytes, and high‐voltage cathodes represent promising candidates for next‐generation devices exhibiting improved power and safety, but such solid polymer electrolytes generally do not exhibit the required excellent electrochemical properties and thermal stability in tandem. Here, an interpenetrating network polymer with weakly coordinating anion nodes that functions as a high‐performing single‐ion conducting electrolyte in the presence of minimal plasticizer, with a wide electrochemical stability window, a high room‐temperature conductivity of 1.5 × 10 −4 S cm −1 , and exceptional selectivity for Li‐ion conduction ( t Li+ = 0.95) is reported. Importantly, this material is also flame retardant and highly stable in contact with lithium metal. Significantly, a lithium metal battery prototype containing this quasi‐solid electrolyte is shown to outperform a conventional battery featuring a polymer electrolyte.

Shin, Dong‐Myeong↗

Optimum aggregation of geographically distributed flexible resources in strategic smart-grid/microgrid locations

This paper determines optimum aggregation areas for a given distribution network considering spatial distribution of loads and costs of aggregation. An elitist genetic algorithm combined with a hierarchical clustering and a Thevenin network reduction is implemented to compute strategic locations and aggregate demand within each area. The aggregation reduces large distribution networks having thousands of nodes to an equivalent network with few aggregated loads, thereby significantly reducing the computational burden. Furthermore, it not only helps distribution system operators in making faster operational decisions by understanding during which time of the day will be in need of flexibility, from which specific area, and in which amount, but also enables the flexibilities stemming from small distributed resources to be traded in various power/energy markets. A combination of central and local aggregation scheme where a central aggregator enables market participation, while local aggregators materialize the accepted bids, is implemented to realize this concept. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing network performances with and without aggregation. Finally, for a given network configuration, steady-state performance of aggregated network is significantly accurate (≈ ±1.5% error) compared to very high errors associated with forecast of individual consumer demand.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

The CMS Data Acquisition - Architectures for the Phase-2 Upgrade

The upgraded High Luminosity LHC, after the third Long Shutdown (LS3), will provide an instantaneous luminosity of 7.5 × 10 34 cm -2 s -1 (levelled), at the price of extreme pileup of up to 200 interactions per crossing. In LS3, the CMS Detector will also undergo a major upgrade to prepare for the phase-2 of the LHC physics program, starting around 2025. The upgraded detector will be read out at an unprecedented data rate of up to 50 Tb/s and an event rate of 750 kHz. Complete events will be analysed by software algorithms running on standard processing nodes, and selected events will be stored permanently at a rate of up to 10 kHz for offline processing and analysis. Here in this paper we discuss the baseline design of the DAQ and HLT systems for the phase-2, taking into account the projected evolution of high speed network fabrics for event building and distribution, and the anticipated performance of general purpose CPU. Implications on hardware and infrastructure requirements for the DAQ “data center” are analysed. Emerging technologies for data reduction are considered. Novel possible approaches to event building and online processing, inspired by trending developments in other areas of computing dealing with large masses of data, are also examined. We conclude by discussing the opportunities offered by reading out and processing parts of the detector, wherever the front-end electronics allows, at the machine clock rate (40 MHz). This idea presents interesting challenges and its physics potential should be studied.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DataFed: Towards Reproducible Research via Federated Data Management

The increasingly collaborative, globalized nature of scientific research combined with the need to share data and the explosion in data volumes present an urgent need for a scientific data management system (SDMS). An SDMS presents a logical and holistic view of data that greatly simplifies and empowers data organization, curation, searching, sharing, dissemination, etc. We present DataFed - a lightweight, distributed SDMS that spans a federation of storage systems within a loosely-coupled network of scientific facilities. Unlike existing SDMS offerings, DataFed uses high-performance and scalable user management and data transfer technologies that simplify deployment, maintenance, and expansion of DataFed. DataFed provides web-based and command-line interfaces to manage data and integrate with complex scientific workflows. DataFed represents a step towards reproducible scientific research by enabling reliable staging of the correct data at the desired environment.

Stansberry, Dale↗

A Dynamically-Reconfigurable Burst-Mode Link Using a Nanosecond Photonic Switch

Fast optical circuit switching has great potential to solve scaling issues with traditional packet-switch based networks and improve bandwidth and power efficiency in datacenter and high-performance computing applications. One difficultly in utilizing a fast optical switch is that the optical signal must be rapidly reacquired after each switching event so as to not significantly impact the overall throughput of the system. In this work we present a system-level integration of a nanosecond-scale $2 \times 2$ silicon photonic switch with a 25-Gbps burst-mode receiver that can lock in 31 ns. A novel FPGA-based control plane was used to generate test data, control the silicon photonic switch and burst-mode receiver, and measure bit errors at 12.5 and 20 Gbps. Error-free links (BER $< 10^{-12}$ ) with system-level reconfiguration times below 60 ns (at 20 Gbps) and 90 ns (at 12.5 Gbps) including bit- and frame-synchronization are demonstrated.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

High Performance Data Transfer for Distributed Data Intensive Sciences

We report on the development of ZX software providing high performance data transfer and encryption. The design scales in: computation power, network interfaces, and IOPS while carefully balancing the available resources. Two U.S. patent-pending algorithms help tackle data sets containing lots of small files and very large files, and provide insensitivity to network latency. It has a cluster-oriented architecture, using peer-to-peer technologies to ease deployment, operation, usage, and resource discovery. Its unique optimizations enable effective use of flash memory. Using a pair of existing data transfer nodes at SLAC and NERSC, we compared its performance to that of bbcp and GridFTP and determined that they were comparable. With a proof of concept created using two four-node clusters with multiple distributed multi-core CPUs, network interfaces and flash memory, we achieved 155Gbps memory-to-memory over a 2x100Gbps link aggregated channel and 70Gbps file-to-file with encryption over a 5000 mile 100Gbps link.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Xenon International Overview

The Xenon International system is a fully automated unattended system designed to collect, separate, purify, quantify, and perform nuclear counting on radioxenon isotopes as well as transmit data using two-way communications (Figure 1). Xenon International is designed to stringent requirements that make it an high performance next-generation-system for use in nuclear explosion monitoring networks such as the International Monitoring System (IMS) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Unrolled Video Super-Resolution Network with Autoregressive Prior for the Case of Known Motion

Real-time detection and classification of distant objects is necessary for many national security applications. However, when objects are far from the sensor, they occupy only a small number of pixels in the captured video, limiting the amount of visual detail available for recognition. State-of-the-art classification methods typically rely on high-resolution (HR) video streams to capture characteristic object features, but obtaining such detail is challenging for distant objects that occupy only a few pixels. This motivates the development of video super-resolution (VSR) methods that enhance object classification by recovering fine details from low-pixel representations. Current VSR methods rely either on model-based optimization, which is interpretable but computationally expensive, or on learning-based approaches, which are efficient and high-performing but often lack flexibility and interpretability. In this report, we propose an end-to-end trainable unrolled VSR network, UVSRNet, which super-resolves each frame in a video by exploiting sub-pixel motion between neighboring low-resolution (LR) frames as well as incorporating high-frequency detail from previously super-resolved frames. In particular, by unrolling a plug-and-play (PnP) half-quadratic splitting (HQS) algorithm, we leverage a model-based data-fitting module alongside a learning-based autoregressive prior module. This combination yields a method that maintains the flexibility and interpretability of model-based methods while achieving the performance advantages of learning-based methods.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Complex Network Analysis and Intelligent Monitoring Platform

Data Products has particular interest in developing an efficient network analysis and monitoring system that utilizes advanced machine learning methods to mine complex network data of the type generated within large data centers, with an objective to provide tangible business-usable intelligence. The Laboratory is currently the lead institution for a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE/SC) network research project called BigData Express (BDE). The project seeks to provide an orchestration service for high-performance data movement of data sets for large-scale science. This collaboration is believed to potentially be a highly symbiotic one, with Data Products platform development benefiting from the rich sets of network data available in the BDE development environment, and BDE benefiting from the Data Products machine learning analysis of BDE-generated data movement.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Energy Systems Integration Facility Stewardship Summary: Fiscal Year 2023

A summary of NREL's good stewardship of the nationally unique Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) highlighting performance metrics, infrastructure and capability upgrades, and examples of R&D impact. In fiscal year 2023, ESIF installed its third-generation high-performance computer, expanded capabailities for validating building energy controls, and demonstrated a leap in scale through virtual networking with another national laboratory. ESIF researchers made breakthroughs in cybersecurity for energy systems, efficient high-powered electric vehicle charging, leveraging reinforcement learning for grid resilience, and more.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,ENERGY CONSERVATION, C↗

Self-healing, self-assembling islanded power systems using only local measurements

This SAND report collects the results from the LDRD project “SHAZAM”, which aimed to push the limits of performance for self-healing, self-assembling power systems whose sectionalizing and load-control agents rely on local measurements only (i.e., only what they can measure at their own terminals, with no data sharing between agents). This work includes self-networking microgrids. The key objectives of this work were a) to demonstrate how high the performance of local-measurement-only self-assembling power systems can be; and b) to solve certain technical problems associated with such systems, such as their inability to prevent the accidental formation of closed loops and their tendency to thermally overload some conductors. “SHAZAM” investigators a) demonstrated that the performance of such systems can be surprisingly high, b) demonstrated that such systems are quite robust to all kinds of variations, and c) developed and demonstrated solutions to several key challenges associated with this type of system.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Efficient Topology Assessment for Integrated Transmission and Distribution Network with 10,000+ Inverter-based Resources

The renewable energy proliferation calls upon the grid operators and planners to systematically evaluate the potential impacts of distributed energy resources (DERs). Considering the significant differences between various inverter-based resources (IBRs), especially the different capabilities between grid-forming inverters and grid-following inverters, it is crucial to develop an efficient and effective assessment procedure besides available co-simulation framework with high computation burdens. This paper presents a streamlined graph-based topology assessment for the integrated power system transmission and distribution networks. Graph analyses were performed based on the integrated graph of modified miniWECC grid model and IEEE 8500-node test feeder model, high performance computing platform with 40 nodes and total 2400 CPUs has been utilized to process this integrated graph, which has 100,000+ nodes and 10,000+ IBRs. The node ranking results not only verified the applicability of the proposed method, but also revealed the potential of distributed grid forming (GFM) and grid following (GFL) inverters interacting with the centralized power plants.

Graph Analysis, Topology evaluation, Infrastructur↗

High Performance Data Analytics on a Commodity Private Cloud

Sandia is researching novel methods of analysis for large datasets. The term “Big Data” has been used frequently in recent years to describe a discipline of computer science that attempts to distil an increasing quantity of data into a result or meaningful subset that can be easily visualized and acted upon by human consumers. These data are frequently characterized by one or more of the following: high volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. Sandia scientists and researchers are no strangers to large datasets, which often typify the result of high-performance computing workloads. The challenge for Sandia data scientists, however, comes at the arrival of exascale computing, which has become mandated by executive order for national computing centers. Because of power and networking limitations, exascale computing precludes the movement of datasets at exascale from data production to data analysis. Such analysis must be done in-situ, to mitigate the time and power costs of network transport. Currently, many of Sandia’s data analytics environments exist as independent entities, often specialized for individual use cases, interconnected to other data analytics, high-performance computing, and storage systems. Sandia is procuring, installing, and researching future platforms for such data analytics. A memory footprint of 256 GB per node, fourteen data rate (FDR) InfiniBand networking, PCIe connected non-volatile memory (NVMe) data storage, and an object data store will characterize the coming institutional data analytics platforms. The combined systems will contain 300 compute nodes. A cloud-inspired software stack resulting from collaboration between the Sandia centers will allow the systems to support a flexible mix of user and system-facing workloads and use cases including code development and testing in R and Python, Apache Hadoop and Spark, distributed in-memory databases, graph analytics, emulytics, system log and predictive analytics, and data visualization for institutional and mission customers. These systems will arrive at the end of FY 2015 and production is planned by the spring of FY 2016.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗