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Idaho National Laboratory Quarterly Performance Analysis - 2nd Quarter FY2014

This report is published quarterly by the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Performance Assurance Organization. The Department of Energy Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (ORPS), as prescribed in DOE Order 232.2, “Occurrence Reporting and Processing of Operations Information,” requires a quarterly analysis of events, both reportable and not reportable, for the previous 12 months. This report is the analysis of occurrence reports and other deficiency reports (including not reportable events) identified at INL from January 2014 through March 2014.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Performance Analysis of OpenSHMEM Applications with TAU Commander

The TAU Performance System® (TAU) is a powerful and highly versatile profiling and tracing tool ecosystem for performance engineering of parallel programs. Developed over the last twenty years, TAU has evolved with each new generation of HPC systems and scales efficiently to hundreds of thousands of cores. TAU’s organic growth has resulted in a loosely coupled software toolbox such that novice users first encountering TAU’s complexity and vast array of features are often intimidated and easily frustrated. To lower the barrier to entry for novice TAU users, ParaTools and the US Department of Energy have developed “TAU Commander,” a performance engineering workflow manager that facilitates a systematic approach to performance engineering, guides users through common profiling and tracing workflows, and offers constructive feedback in case of error. This work compares TAU and TAU Commander workflows for common performance engineering tasks in OpenSHMEM applications and demonstrates workflows targeting two different SHMEM implementations, Intel Xeon “Haswell” and “Knights Landing” processors, direct and indirect measurement methods, callsite, profiles, and traces.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

MDPCT1 Quench Data and Performance Analysis

MDPCT1 is a four-layer cos-theta Nb3Sn dipole demonstrator developed and tested at FNAL in the framework of the U.S. Magnet Development Program. The magnet reached record fields for accelerator magnets of 14.1 T at 4.5 K in the first test and 14.5 T at 1.9 K in the second test and then showed large degradation. While its inner coils performed exceptionally well with only two quenches up to 14.5 T and no evidence of degradation, the outer coils degraded over the course of testing. By adopting new measurement and analysis techniques at FNAL we are discussing in detail what happened. Both success and failure in our diagnostics are discussed. The evolution of techniques over the course of two tests (and three thermal cycles) shows the path to address challenges brought by the first four-layer magnet tested at FNAL. This paper presents the analysis of quench data along with diagnostic features and complementary measurements taken in support of the magnet performance analysis.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Performance analysis of fully explicit and fully implicit solvers within a spectral element shallow-water atmosphere model

In this study, explicit Runge–Kutta methods and implicit multistep methods utilizing a Newton–Krylov nonlinear solver are evaluated for a range of configurations of the shallow-water dynamical core of the spectral element community atmosphere model to evaluate their computational performance. These configurations are designed to explore the attributes of each method under different but relevant model usage scenarios including varied spectral order within an element, static regional refinement, and scaling to the largest problem sizes. This analysis is performed within the shallow-water dynamical core option of a full climate model code base to enable a wealth of simulations for study, with the aim of informing solver development within the more complete hydrostatic dynamical core used for climate research. The limitations and benefits to using explicit versus implicit methods, with different parameters and settings, are discussed in light of the trade-offs with Message Passing Interface (MPI) communication and memory and their inherent efficiency bottlenecks. Given the performance behavior across the configurations analyzed here, the recommendation for future work using the implicit solvers is conditional based on scale separation and the stiffness of the problem. For the regionally refined configurations, the implicit method has about the same efficiency as the explicit method, without considering efficiency gains from a preconditioner. The potential for improvement using a preconditioner is greatest for higher spectral order configurations, where more work is shifted to the linear solver. Finally, initial simulations with OpenACC directives to utilize a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) when performing function evaluations show improvements locally, and that overall gains are possible with adjustments to data exchanges.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Performance Analysis of Positive-feedback-based Active Anti-islanding Schemes for Inverter-Based Distributed Generators

Recently proposed positive-feedback-based anti-islanding schemes (AI) are highly effective in preventing islanding without causing any degradation in power quality. This paper aims to analyze the performance of these schemes quantitatively in the context of the dynamic models of inverter-based distributed generators (DG). In this study, the characteristics of these active anti-islanding methods are discussed and design guidelines are derived.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

MODAL FREQUENCY TRACKING: Performance Analysis on Noisy Experimental Ground Test Data

Mechanical devices operating in an environment contaminated by noise, uncertainties, and extraneous disturbances lead to low signal-to-noise-ratios creating an extremely challenging signal processing problem—especially for on-line, realtime, in-flight application. In this report, we discuss a model-based approach to incorporate physical device features into a dynamic structure that can be used to perform on-line tracking of modal frequencies. The approach we take, after pre-processing the raw measurement data, is to obtain a representation of the structural device under test that captures its underlying response to a suite of excitations and operating conditions. One approach is to apply modern system identification techniques based on stochastic subspace methods capable of both: (1) identifying the underlying black-box structure enabling the extraction of structural modes that can be used for analysis; and (2) modal tracking under continued vibrational excitation as in a real-time, in-flight like environment. The vibrational signature of the structural device is measured directly using a suite of tri-axial accelerometers characterizing a multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) dynamic system. In this analysis, we have 15 tri-axial accelerometer measurements or 45 total output channels along with a single excitation also measured with a tri-axial accelerometer providing a 3-input system for processing. We initially describe the experiment and then briefly develop the necessary background in stochastic subspace realization, discuss the algorithm and apply it to the isolated structural device, first, characterized by the set of noisy MIMO accelerometer measurements extracting the modal model from the data (subspace identification), extract the unique modal frequencies (modal coordinate transformation), track their evolution (real-time tracker) to evaluate the overall performance of the processor. Next we evaluate processor performance when the structural device is incorporated into a flight vehicle for further performance analysis. We summarize the results and predict performance.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Whole building retrofit using vacuum insulation panels and energy performance analysis

Vacuum insulation panels (VIPs), due to their high thermal performance, provide an attractive alternative to traditional building insulation materials, especially as an option for retrofitting old, poorly insulated buildings. This article describes the complete retrofit of all exterior walls of a single-story building in a cold climate using VIPs. A recently-developed low-cost VIP, called modified atmosphere insulation (MAI), was used in this study. Two buildings of near-identical construction were studied, with one remaining unaltered and serving as the baseline while the other served as the retrofit building. The VIPs or MAI panels proved to be a feasible and durable option for retrofitting building envelopes. Thermal performance of both buildings was analyzed using in-situ temperature and heat flow sensors. Numerical models of the two buildings were created, benchmarked using experimental data and used for predictions of annual energy savings due to the addition of MAI panels to the exterior walls. The models predicted significant reduction in the annual heating energy consumption in the retrofitted building compared to the baseline building.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Fusion PIC code performance analysis on the Cori KNL system

We study the attainable performance of Particle-In-Cell codes on the Cori KNL system by analyzing a miniature particle push application based on the fusion PIC code XGC1. We start from the most basic building blocks of a PIC code and build up the complexity to identify the kernels that cost the most in performance and focus optimization efforts there. Particle push kernels operate at high AI and are not likely to be memory bandwidth or even cache bandwidth bound on KNL. Therefore, we see only minor benefits from the high bandwidth memory available on KNL, and achieving good vectorization is shown to be the most beneficial optimization path with theoretical yield of up to 8x speedup on KNL. In practice we are able to obtain up to a 4x gain from vectorization due to limitations set by the data layout and memory latency.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

SERVER DEVELOPMENT FOR NSLS-II PHYSICS APPLICATIONS AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

The beam commissioning software framework of NSLS-II project adopts a client/server based architecture to replace the more traditional monolithic high level application approach. The server software under development is available via an open source sourceforge project named epics-pvdata, which consists of modules pvData, pvAccess, pvIOC, and pvService. Examples of two services that already exist in the pvService module are itemFinder, and gather. Each service uses pvData to store in-memory transient data, pvService to transfer data over the network, and pvIOC as the service engine. The performance benchmarking for pvAccess and both gather service and item finder service are presented in this paper. The performance comparison between pvAccess and Channel Access are presented also. For an ultra low emittance synchrotron radiation light source like NSLS II, the control system requirements, especially for beam control are tight. To control and manipulate the beam effectively, a use case study has been performed to satisfy the requirement and theoretical evaluation has been performed. The analysis shows that model based control is indispensable for beam commissioning and routine operation. However, there are many challenges such as how to re-use a design model for on-line model based control, and how to combine the numerical methods for modeling of a realistic lattice with the analytical techniques for analysis of its properties. To satisfy the requirements and challenges, adequate system architecture for the software framework for beam commissioning and operation is critical. The existing traditional approaches are self-consistent, and monolithic. Some of them have adopted a concept of middle layer to separate low level hardware processing from numerical algorithm computing, physics modelling, data manipulating and plotting, and error handling. However, none of the existing approaches can satisfy the requirement. A new design has been proposed by introducing service oriented architecture technology, and client interface is undergoing. The design and implementation adopted a new EPICS implementation, namely epics-pvdata [9], which is under active development. The implementation of this project under Java is close to stable, and binding to other language such as C++ and/or Python is undergoing. In this paper, we focus on the performance benchmarking and comparison for pvAccess and Channel Access, the performance evaluation for 2 services, gather and item finder respectively.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

BISON Fuel Performance Analysis of FeCrAl cladding with updated properties

In order to improve the accident tolerance of light water reactor (LWR) fuel, alternative cladding materials have been proposed to replace zirconium (Zr)-based alloys. Of these materials, there is a particular focus on iron-chromium-aluminum (FeCrAl) alloys due to much slower oxidation kinetics in high-temperature steam than Zr-alloys. This should decrease the energy release due to oxidation and allow the cladding to remain integral longer in the presence of high temperature steam, making accident mitigation more likely. As a continuation of the development for these alloys, suitability for normal operation must also be demonstrated. This research is focused on modeling the integral thermo-mechanical performance of FeCrAl-cladded fuel during normal reactor operation. Preliminary analysis has been performed to assess FeCrAl alloys (namely Alkrothal 720 and APMT) as a suitable fuel cladding replacement for Zr-alloys, using the MOOSE-based, finite-element fuel performance code BISON and the best available thermal-mechanical and irradiation-induced constitutive properties. These simulations identify the effects of the mechanical-stress and irradiation response of FeCrAl, and provide a comparison with Zr-alloys. In comparing these clad materials, fuel rods have been simulated for normal reactor operation and simple steady-state operation. Normal reactor operating conditions target the cladding performance over the rod lifetime (~4 cycles) for the highest-power rod in the highest-power fuel assembly under reactor power maneuvering. The power histories and axial temperature profiles input into BISON were generated from a neutronics study on full-core reactivity equivalence for FeCrAl using the 3D full core simulator NESTLE. Evolution of the FeCrAl cladding behavior over time is evaluated by using steady-state operating conditions such as a simple axial power profile, a constant cladding surface temperature, and a constant fuel power history. The fuel rod designs and operating conditions used are based off the Peach Bottom BWR and design consideration was given to minimize the neutronic penalty of the FeCrAl cladding by changing fuel enrichment and cladding thickness. As this study progressed, systematic parametric analysis of the fuel and cladding creep responses were also performed.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Computing Bottleneck Structures at Scale for High-Precision Network Performance Analysis

The Theory of Bottleneck Structures is a recently-developed framework for studying the performance of data networks. It describes how local perturbations in one part of the network propagate and interact with others. This framework is a powerful analytical tool that allows network operators to make accurate predictions about network behavior and thereby optimize performance. Previous work implemented a software package for bottleneck structure analysis, but applied it only to toy examples. In this work, we introduce the first software package capable of scaling bottleneck structure analysis to production-size networks. Here, we benchmark our system using logs from ESnet, the Department of Energy's high-performance data network that connects research institutions in the U.S. Using the previously published tool as a baseline, we demonstrate that our system achieves vastly improved performance, constructing the bottleneck structure graphs in 0.21 s and calculating link derivatives in 0.09 s on average. We also study the asymptotic complexity of our core algorithms, demonstrating good scaling properties and strong agreement with theoretical bounds. These results indicate that our new software package can maintain its fast performance when applied to even larger networks. They also show that our software is efficient enough to analyze rapidly changing networks in real time. Overall, we demonstrate the feasibility of applying bottleneck structure analysis to solve practical problems in large, real-world data networks.

benchmark↗

Roofline scaling trajectories: A method for parallel application and architectural performance analysis

The end of Dennard scaling signaled a shift in HPC supercomputer architectures from systems built from single-core processor architectures to systems built from multicore and eventually manycore architectures. This transition substantially complicated performance optimization and analysis as new programming models were created, new scaling methodologies deployed, and on-chip contention became a bottleneck to performance. Existing distributed memory performance models like logP and logGP were unable to capture this contention. The Roofline model was created to address this contention and its interplay with locality. However, to date, the Roofline model has focused on full-node concurrency. In this paper, we extend the Roofline model to capture the effects of concurrency on data locality and on-chip contention. We demonstrate the value of this new technique by evaluating the NAS parallel benchmarks on both multicore and manycore architectures under both strong-And weak-scaling regimes. In order to quantify the interplay between programming model and locality, we evaluate scaling under both the OpenMP and flat MPI programming models.

Ibrahim, K↗

BISON Fuel Performance Analysis of IFA-796 Rod 3 & 4 and Investigation of the Impact of Fuel Creep

In order to improve the accident tolerance of light water reactor (LWR) fuel, alternative cladding materials have been proposed to replace the currently used zirconium (Zr)-based alloys. Of these materials, there is a particular focus on iron-chromiumaluminum (FeCrAl) alloys because they exhibit slower oxidation kinetics in high-temperature steam than Zr-alloys. This should decrease the energy release due to oxidation and slow cladding consumption in the presence of high temperature steam. These alloys should also exhibit increased “coping time” in the event of an accident scenario by improving the mechanical performance at high temperatures, allowing greater flexibility to achieve core cooling. As a continuation of the development of these alloys, in-reactor irradiation testing of FeCrAl cladded fuel rods has started. In order to provide insight on the possible behavior of these fuel rods as they undergo irradiation in the Halden Boiling Water Reactor, engineering analysis has been performed using FeCrAl material models implemented into the BISON fuel performance code. This milestone report provides an update on the ongoing development of modeling capability to predict FeCrAl cladding fuel performance and to provide an early look at the possible behavior of planned in-reactor FeCrAl cladding experiments. In particular, this report consists of two separate analyses. The first analysis consists of fuel performance simulations of IFA-796 rod 4 and two segments of rod 3. These simulations utilize previously implemented material models for the C35M FeCrAl alloy and UO2 to provide a bounding behavior analysis corresponding to variation of the initial fuel cladding gap thickness within the fuel rod. The second analysis is an assessment of the fuel and cladding stress states after modification of the fuel creep model that is currently implemented in the BISON fuel performance code. Effects from modifying the fuel creep model were identified for the BISON simulations of the IFA-796 rod 4 experiment, but show that varying the creep model (within the range investigated here) only provide a minimal increase in the fuel radius and maximum cladding hoop stress. Continued investigation of fuel behavioral models will include benchmarking the modified fuel creep model against available experimental data, as well as an investigation of the role that fuel cracking will play in the compliance of the fuel. Correctly calculating stress evolution in the fuel is key to assessing fuel behavior up to gap closure and the subsequent deformation of the cladding due to PCMI. The inclusion of frictional contact should also be investigated to determine the axial elongation of the fuel rods for comparison with data from this experiment.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

MIR Performance Analysis

We provide analysis of Oracle StorageTek T10000 Generation B (T10KB) Media Information Record (MIR) Performance Data gathered over the course of a year from our production High Performance Storage System (HPSS). The analysis shows information in the MIR may be used to improve tape subsystem operations. Most notably, we found the MIR information to be helpful in determining whether the drive or tape was most suspect given a read or write error, and for helping identify which tapes should not be reused given their history of read or write errors. We also explored using the MIR Assisted Search to order file retrieval requests. We found that MIR Assisted Search may be used to reduce the time needed to retrieve collections of files from a tape volume.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Performance Analysis of the Passive Residual Heat Removal System of an Integral Reactor

A demand for small modular reactors (SMRs) is gradually emerging worldwide, especially in Middle East Asia and Africa. SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor) developed by KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) is the first mover among several SMRs. It is designed to produce 100 MW of electricity, or 90 MW of electricity and 40,000 tons of desalinated water concurrently, which is sufficient for 100,000 residents. SMART is currently holding the initiative as the first licensed integral reactor in the world since 4 July 2012, when the standard design approval (SDA) was officially issued by the Nuclear safety and security commission (NSSC). After that, the SMART safety enhancement project was successfully conducted with intense support of the Government, resulting in an in-depth development of the most advanced safety features including the passive residual heat removal system (PRHRS). Recently, an agreement between KAERI and King Abdullah city for atomic and renewable energy (K.A. CARE) was officially signed for the pre-project engineering (PPE) in pursuit of the construction of SMART and developing human resources capability. Both parties are currently conducting a three-year preliminary study to review the feasibility of building SMART and to prepare for its commercialization. KAERI also takes responsibility to train R and D personnel chosen from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Sooner or later, SMART will open the global market of SMR and be the best competitive pioneer. Since the Fukushima accident, the passive cooling system of a nuclear reactor has received a great amount of attention. SMART is designed with passive systems in order to ensure the safety of the reactor. The PRHRS is one of the passive safety systems, which is activated after an accident to remove the residual heat from the core and the sensible heat of the reactor coolant system (RCS) through the steam generators (SGs) until the condition of the RCS reaches a safe shutdown condition. In the present study, the thermal performance of the PRHRS is predicted by using in-house code. Temperature of the RCS and the cooling rate of the RCS are traced with time to see if it is satisfactorily designed to meet the design requirements of the PRHRS. The dependency of the mass flow rate of the natural circulation on the filling ratio (FR) is also discussed. The FR is arbitrarily chosen from 0.22 to 0.50 and further parametric study is needed in the future.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Performance Analysis of the Expected Track Length Estimator

This work investigates whether performance of the MCNP code is improved by the implementation of the expected track length estimator. The expected track length estimator is known to decrease variance when compared to the track length estimator in many classes of Monte Carlo particle transport simulations. However, the computational cost of computing an exponent for every particle collision within a tallied cell has previously been considered prohibitively expensive. Therefore, the goal of this work is to determine whether the variance improvements seen by the expected track length estimator in most cases makes up for the increase in transport time when implemented in the MCNP code.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

INL FY2014 1st Quarterly Performance Analysis

This report is published quarterly by the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Performance Assurance Organization. The Department of Energy Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (ORPS), as prescribed in DOE Order 232.2 “Occurrence Reporting and Processing of Operations Information,” requires a quarterly analysis of events, both reportable and not reportable, for the previous 12 months. This report is the analysis of 76 occurrence reports and over 16 other deficiency reports (including not reportable events) identified at the INL during the period of October 2013 through December 2013. Battelle Energy Alliance (BEA) operates the INL under contract DE AC 07 051D14517

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗