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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 1,009 records · Page 56

Advancing the Adoption of High Performance Computing for Time Domain Simulation

Time domain transient stability simulation of large interconnected power systems is becoming increasingly computationally intensive. With the addition of high levels of variable generation that can aggregately ramp over many hours, both the complexity and time horizon for which power system simulations will need to be conducted are increasing. Additionally, extended-term time domain simulation is required to analyze power system security when cascading events across the system span minutes or even hours. Analysis of these occurrences requires modeling power system dynamics over tens of minutes to many hours rather than tens of seconds. Because of the required high computational intensity, there are presently no stability modeling/simulation platforms that combine the needed computational capabilities with the required power system models relevant for representing and analyzing the potential reliability implications of phenomena that occurs over both short- and extended-term dynamic timeframes.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

HPC Colony II: FAST_OS II: Operating Systems and Runtime Systems at Extreme Scale

HPC Colony II has been a 36-month project focused on providing portable performance for leadership class machines—a task made difficult by the emerging variety of more complex computer architectures. The project attempts to move the burden of portable performance to adaptive system software, thereby allowing domain scientists to concentrate on their field rather than the fine details of a new leadership class machine. To accomplish our goals, we focused on adding intelligence into the system software stack. Our revised components include: new techniques to address OS jitter; new techniques to dynamically address load imbalances; new techniques to map resources according to architectural subtleties and application dynamic behavior; new techniques to dramatically improve the performance of checkpoint-restart; and new techniques to address membership service issues at scale.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Architecture and performance of Perlmutter's 35 PB ClusterStor E1000 all-flash file system

NERSC's newest system, Perlmutter, features a 35 PB all-flash Lustre file system built on HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000. Here, we present its architecture, early performance figures, and performance considerations unique to this architecture. We demonstrate the performance of E1000 OSSes through low-level Lustre tests that achieve over 90% of the theoretical bandwidth of the SSDs at the OST and LNet levels. We also show end-to-end performance for both traditional dimensions of I/O performance (peak bulk-synchronous bandwidth) and nonoptimal workloads endemic to production computing (small, incoherent I/Os at random offsets) and compare them to NERSC's previous system, Cori, to illustrate that Perlmutter achieves the performance of a burst buffer and the resilience of a scratch file system. Finally, we discuss performance considerations unique to all-flash Lustre and present ways in which users and HPC facilities can adjust their I/O patterns and operations to make optimal use of such architectures.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Building a Community Infrastructure for Scalable On-Line Performance Analysis Tools around Open|Speedshop (Final Technical Report)

Peta-scale computing environments pose significant challenges for both system and application developers and addressing them required more than simply scaling up existing tera-scale solutions. Performance analysis tools play an important role in gaining this understanding, but previous monolithic tools with fixed feature sets have not sufficed. Instead, this project worked on the design, implementation, and evaluation of a general, flexible tool infrastructure supporting the construction of performance tools as “pipelines” of high-quality tool building blocks. These tool building blocks provide common performance tool functionality, and are designed for scalability, lightweight data acquisition and analysis, and interoperability. For this project, we built on Open|SpeedShop, a modular and extensible open source performance analysis tool set.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Collaborative project. Ocean-atmosphere interaction from meso-to planetary-scale. Mechanisms, parameterization, and variability

This project aims to improve long term global climate simulations by resolving ocean mesoscale activity and the corresponding response in the atmosphere. The main computational objectives are; i) to perform and assess Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulations with the new Community Atmospheric Model (CAM) spectral element dynamical core; ii) use static mesh refinement to focus on oceanic fronts; iii) develop a new Earth System Modeling tool to investigate the atmospheric response to fronts by selectively filtering surface flux fields in the CESM coupler. The climate research objectives are 1) to improve the coupling of ocean fronts and the atmospheric boundary layer via investigations of dependency on model resolution and stability functions: 2) to understand and simulate the ensuing tropospheric response that has recently been documented in observations: and 3) to investigate the relationship of ocean frontal variability to low frequency climate variability and the accompanying storm tracks and extremes in high resolution simulations. This is a collaborative multi-institution project consisting of computational scientists, climate scientists and climate model developers. It specifically aims at DOE objectives of advancing simulation and predictive capability of climate models through improvements in resolution and physical process representation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Climate Science Performance, Data and Productivity on Titan

Climate Science models are flagship codes for the largest of high performance computing (HPC) resources, both in visibility, with the newly launched Department of Energy (DOE) Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME) effort, and in terms of significant fractions of system usage. The performance of the DOE ACME model is captured with application level timers and examined through a sizeable run archive. Performance and variability of compute, queue time and ancillary services are examined. As Climate Science advances in the use of HPC resources there has been an increase in the required human and data systems to achieve programs goals. A description of current workflow processes (hardware, software, human) and planned automation of the workflow, along with historical and projected data in motion and at rest data usage, are detailed. The combination of these two topics motivates a description of future systems requirements for DOE Climate Modeling efforts, focusing on the growth of data storage and network and disk bandwidth required to handle data at an acceptable rate.

Mayer, Benjamin W↗

LIVVkit 2.1: automated and extensible ice sheet model validation

A collection of scientific analyses, metrics, and visualizations for robustvalidation of ice sheet models is presented using the Land Ice Verificationand Validation toolkit (LIVVkit), version 2.1, and the LIVVkit Extensionsrepository (LEX), version 0.1. This software collection targets stand-aloneice sheet or coupled Earth system models, and handles datasets and analysesthat require high-performance computing and storage. LIVVkit aims to enableefficient and fully reproducible workflows for postprocessing, analysis, andvisualization of observational and model-derived datasets in a shareableformat, whereby all data, methodologies, and output are distributed to usersfor evaluation. Extending from the initial LIVVkit software framework, wedemonstrate Greenland ice sheet simulation validation metrics using thecoupled Community Earth System Model (CESM) as well as an idealizedstand-alone high-resolution Community Ice Sheet Model, version 2 (CISM2),coupled to the Albany/FELIX velocity solver (CISM-Albany or CISM-A). As oneexample of the capability, LIVVkit analyzes the degree to which modelscapture the surface mass balance (SMB) and identifies potential sources ofbias, using recently available in situ and remotely sensed data ascomparison. Related fields within atmosphere and land surface models, e.g.,surface temperature, radiation, and cloud cover, are also diagnosed. Appliedto the CESM1.0, LIVVkit identifies a positive SMB bias that is focusedlargely around Greenland's southwest region that is due to insufficientablation.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Packaging HEP Heterogeneous Mini-apps for Portable Benchmarking and Facility Evaluation on Modern HPCs

High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments are making increasing use of GPUs and GPU dominated High Performance Computer facilities. Both the software and hardware of these systems are rapidly evolving, creating challenges for experiments to make informed decisions as to where they wish to devote resources. In its first phase, the High Energy Physics Center for Computational Excellence (HEP-CCE) produced portable versions of a number of heterogeneous HEP mini-apps, such as p2r, FastCaloSim, Patatrack and the WireCell Toolkit, that exercise a broad range of GPU characteristics, enabling cross platform and facility benchmarking and evaluation. However, these miniapps still require a significant amount of manual intervention to deploy on a new facility. We present our work in developing turn-key deployments of these mini-apps, where by means of containerization and automated configuration and build techniques such as Spack, we are able to quickly test new hardware, software, environments and entire facilities with minimal user intervention, and then track performance metrics over time.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Packaging HEP Heterogeneous Mini-apps for Portable Benchmarking and Facility Evaluation on Modern HPCs

High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments are making increasing use of GPUs and GPU dominated High Performance Computer facilities. Both the software and hardware of these systems are rapidly evolving, creating challenges for experiments to make informed decisions as to where they wish to devote resources. In its first phase, the High Energy Physics Center for Computational Excellence (HEP-CCE) produced portable versions of a number of heterogeneous HEP mini-apps, such as \ptor, FastCaloSim, Patatrack and the WireCell Toolkit, that exercise a broad range of GPU characteristics, enabling cross platform and facility benchmarking and evaluation. However, these mini-apps still require a significant amount of manual intervention to deploy on a new facility. We present our work in developing turn-key deployments of these mini-apps, where by means of containerization and automated configuration and build techniques such as Spack, we are able to quickly test new hardware, software, environments and entire facilities with minimal user intervention, and then track performance metrics over time.

Atif, Mohammad [Brookhaven] (ORCID:000000026889770↗

SU-E-T-152: Building An Ultrafast, Earthquake Proof Treatment Planning System

Purpose: Situated 20 miles from 5 major fault lines in California’s Bay Area, Stanford Universityhas a critical need for IT infrastructure planning to handle the high probability devastating earthquakes. Recently, a multi-million dollar project has been underway to overhaul Stanford’s radiation oncology information systems, maximizing planning system performance and providing true disaster recovery abilities. An overview of the project will be given with particular focus on lessons learned throughout the build. Methods: In this implementation, two isolated external datacenters provide geographical redundancy to Stanford’s main campus datacenter. Real-time mirroring is made of all data stored to our serial attached network (SAN) storage. In each datacenter, hardware/software virtualization was heavily implemented to maximize server efficiency and provide a robust mechanism to seamlessly migrate users in the event of an earthquake. System performance is routinely assessed through the use of virtualized data robots, able to log in to the system at scheduled times, perform routine planning tasks and report timing results to a performance dashboard. A substantial dose calculation framework (608 CPU cores) has been constructed as part of the implementation. Results: Migration to a virtualized server environment with a high performance SAN has resulted in up to a 45% speed up of common treatment planning tasks. Switching to a 608 core DCF has resulted in a 280% speed increase in dose calculations. Server tuning was found to further improved read/write performance by 20%. Disaster recovery tests are carried out quarterly and, although successful, remain time consuming to perform and verify functionality. Conclusion: Achieving true disaster recovery capabilities is possible through server virtualization, support from skilled IT staff and leadership. Substantial performance improvements are also achievable through careful tuning of server resources and disk read/write operations. Developing a streamlined method to comprehensively test failover is a key requirement to the system’s success.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

An advanced joint inversion system for CO 2 storage modeling with large date sets for characterization and real-time monitoring-enhancing storage performance and reducing failure risks under uncertainties

As large-scale, commercial storage projects become operational, the problem of utilizing information from diverse sources becomes more critically important. In this project, we developed, tested, and applied an advanced joint data inversion system for CO 2 storage modeling with large data sets for use in site characterization and real-time monitoring. Emphasis was on the development of advanced and efficient computational algorithms for joint inversion of hydro-geophysical data, coupled with state-of-the-art forward process simulations. The developed system consists of (1) inversion tools using characterization data, such as 3D seismic survey (amplitude images), borehole log and core data, as well as hydraulic, tracer and thermal tests before CO 2 injection, (2) joint inversion tools for updating the geologic model with the distribution of rock properties, thus reducing uncertainty, using hydro-geophysical monitoring data, and (3) highly efficient algorithms for directly solving the dense or sparse linear algebra systems derived from the joint inversion. The system combines methods from stochastic analysis, fast linear algebra, and high performance computing. The developed joint inversion tools have been tested through synthetic CO 2 storage examples.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

FY 2021 Mid-Year HPC Utilization Report M3UF-21IN0701018

Idaho National Laboratory (INL), supported by the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) through the Nuclear Science User Facilities, provides access to supercomputer systems and data storage along with support staff for system management, software installation, cybersecurity and user support to the broader DOE-NE user community. Users include individuals at universities, industry, and government laboratories enabling a wide range of research and development and mission-supporting activities. The availability of high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities is a key foundation of collaboration and innovation in nuclear energy systems research. HPC resources and INL directly support the mission and objectives of DOE-NE. From October 2020 through March 2021, INL HPC capabilities were utilized by a diverse set of computing and applied researchers, for a wide range of research and engineering activities. This report focuses on current INL HPC systems and utilization from October 1, 2020 through March 31, 2021.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Robust, Accurate, and Efficient: Quantum Embedding Using the Huzinaga Level-Shift Projection Operator for Complex Systems

Using wave function (WF) in density functional theory (DFT) embedding methods provides a framework for performing localized, high-accuracy WF calculations on a system, while not incurring the full computational cost of the WF calculation on the full system. To effectively partition a system into localized WF and DFT subsystems, we utilize the Huzinaga level-shift projection operator within an absolutely localized basis. In this work, we study the ability of the absolutely localized Huzinaga level-shift projection operator method to study complex WF and DFT partitions, including partitions between multiple covalent bonds, a double bond, and transition-metal–ligand bonds. We find that our methodology can accurately describe all of these complex partitions. Additionally, we study the robustness of this method with respect to the WF method, specifically where the embedded systems were described using a multiconfigurational WF method. We found that the method is systematically improvable with respect to both the number of atoms in the WF region and the size of the basis set used, with energy errors less than 1 kcal/mol. Additionally, we calculated the adsorption energy of H2 to a model of an iron metal–organic framework (Fe-MOF-74) to within 1 kcal/mol compared to CASPT2 calculations performed on the full model while incurring only a small fraction of the full computational cost. In conclusion, this work demonstrates that the absolutely localized Huzinaga level-shift projection operator method is applicable to very complex systems with difficult electronic structures.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Quantum computing approach for building surface sunlit in urban-scale energy modeling

Solar shadow calculations are needed in building energy modeling and performance simulation of PV systems installed on roofs or facades of buildings. We present a quantum computing approach for calculation of building surface sunlit fractions by recasting solar visibility as a binary optimization problem solved by quantum annealing. Each triangulated surface centroid is encoded as a binary qubit indicating sunlit or shaded status. Geometric visibility constraints are derived from the Möller-Trumbore intersection algorithm and converted into a constrained quadratic binary model compatible with contemporary quantum annealers. The coefficients were embedded to D-Wave quantum computer. To demonstrate feasibility, we conducted a case study in San Francisco for a target building with 52 triangles and roughly 2700 nearby triangles within 50 m evaluated at representative winter and summer solar positions. The results demonstrated that quantum annealing can reliably calculate and distinguish sunlit from shaded surfaces. Quantum samples achieved average accuracy exceeding 92.4 %, with the aggregate surface-level agreement approaching 99.9 %. The outputs of quantum computers agreed closely with classical algorithms, indicating practical feasibility and promising scalability. Finally, the hourly sunlit fractions of building surfaces can be obtained for urban energy modelling. This is the first study to apply quantum computing to the solar shadow and building surface sunlit calculation. It introduces a new paradigm that differs fundamentally from traditional approaches.

Deng, Zhipeng↗

SIPMaP: A Tool for Modeling Irregular Parallel Computations in the Super Instruction Architecture

Performance modeling is becoming an increasingly important part of the parallel application development process, particularly for expensive computations that will be run on very high-end systems where resources are scarce. We describe a performance modeling tool SIPMaP (Super Instruction Processor Modeling and Prediction) developed for the Super-Instruction Architecture (SIA). The SIA is designed for applications where the dominant data structures are large multi-dimensional arrays and it comprises a DSL, the Super-Instruction Assembly Language (SIAL) that supports expressing algorithms in terms of blocks (tiles), and its runtime system Super Instruction Processor (SIP) that manages distribution and disk storage of the arrays. SIPMaP generates performance models from the SIAL source code. In comparison with many applications where useful performance models have been developed and reported, these programs are irregular and have other difficult to model characteristics such as extensive overlapping of communication and computation.

Computer Science↗

Tuyere: Enabling Scalable Memory Workloads for System Exploration

Memory technologies are under active development. Meanwhile, workloads on contemporary computing systems are increasing rapidly in size and diversity. Such dynamics in hardware and software further widen the gap between memory system design and performance evaluation. In this work, we propose a data-centric abstraction of high-performance computing applications for fast exploration of new memory technologies. We also provide a framework that uses a formal modeling language to describe the abstraction, automatically translates abstractions into memory traffic, and directly interfaces with cycle-accurate simulators. We evaluated the framework using 20 workloads and validated the memory traffic profile, the simulation results, and the relative memory changes of four memory technologies. Our results show that the data-centric abstraction can accurately capture application behavior adaptable to different input problems and can expedite system exploration.

Peng, Ivy Bo↗

Performance analysis of integrated Nuclear-Solar Energy system sharing same molten salt thermal energy storage

Advanced nuclear reactors may be deployed with integrated thermal energy storage to improve flexibility and maximize revenue. This presents opportunities for thermal integration with concentrating solar power (CSP) to generate component synergies and/or improve performance. Here in this study, a computational model is developed for an integrated nuclear and CSP system that both share the same molten salt thermal energy storage (TES). Optimized dispatch schedules are developed subject to various market conditions, and the ratio of the nuclear to CSP thermal output is also varied. Performance of the combined system is compared to separate nuclear and solar plants, to determine if there is an overall benefit that can be derived from sharing the TES. Given sufficient volatility in electricity prices (e.g., under CAISO market conditions), synergies of up to 8% in net revenue are observed as a result of sharing the same TES, primarily due to improved revenue from enabling operation of the turbine closer to its design point, as well as being able to better take advantage of higher electricity prices. The synergy benefits are largest when the nuclear and solar plants have similar thermal output. However, when prices are less volatile the opposite behavior can be observed and it can be preferable to operate the nuclear plant as a baseload generator.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

ESIF 2016: Modernizing Our Grid and Energy System

This 2016 annual report highlights work conducted at the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) in FY 2016, including grid modernization, high-performance computing and visualization, and INTEGRATE projects.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗