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At least 1,693 records · Page 94

The Ristra Project: FY20/21 Milestone Report

The ASC Advanced Technology Development and Mitigation (ATDM) sub-program was established in 2014 to develop new simulation tools operating on exascale-class computers to serve NNSA (see Appendix B). Over the course of ATDM, LANL management have set a strategy for exascale-class application codes that follows two supportive and mutually risk-mitigating paths: evolution for established production integrated design codes (IDCs) – with a strong pedigree within the user community – based upon existing programming paradigms(MPI+X); and a new start ATDM project, Ristra, a high-risk/high-reward push for a next-generation multi-physics, multi-scale simulation toolkit based on emerging advanced programming systems(with an initial focus on data-flow task-based models exemplified by Legion). The role of Ristra as the high-risk/high-reward path for LANL’s codes was fully consistent with the goals of ATDM as described in Appendix B, in particular its emphasis on evolving ASC capabilities through novel computing programming models and computing technologies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Simple, Secure, Internet Delivery of MOOSE-based Applications

Application packaging and distribution are the final steps for delivering software to end-users; both are frequently neglected when creating scientific software. Commercial businesses rely on electronic distribution systems that have rendered disk drives obsolete. Still, national laboratories continue to rely heavily on removable media to distribute and limit access to controlled applications. With increasing concerns of unauthorized copying of sensitive applications, a modern distribution system that utilizes cryptographically secure communication and authentication protocols has been developed. This new distribution system will secure the chain of custody for nuclear software while simultaneously simplifying access to these tools. This report summarizes four primary advancements made toward the secure distribution of Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS)-developed, Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE)-based applications: application installation, package distribution, automated package building, and distribution of documentation. NEAMS is currently developing more than ten separate applications based on the open-source MOOSE Framework. Distribution of these applications has primarily been accomplished by distributing source code, with end-users compiling the applications themselves. This work created a mechanism where MOOSE applications can be installed in a similar way to any other software. This allows both administrators and end-users simplified access to runnable executables. With this new installation capability, it was then possible to rethink distribution. A new, secure capability for delivering MOOSE-based applications over the internet has been created. This system requires unique cryptographic tokens for authentication, greatly securing the custody chain for software. Once granted access, installation of any NEAMS code can be accomplished with these terminal commands: "conda install ncrc" "ncrc install ncrc-bison." After these two commands (and authenticating) the BISON application will be securely down- loaded from Idaho National Laboratory (INL)’s servers, installed, and ready to use. To enable this new distribution capability to be successful, the open-source Continuous Integration, Verification, Enhancement, and Testing (CIVET) Continuous Integration (CI) capability was augmented to add Continuous Delivery (CD). CD enables the automated building and packaging of MOOSE-based applications as they are modified by development teams, ensuring that our customers can obtain up-to-date versions of the software at any time. The need for instruction on how to use these applications was addressed through modifications to the MOOSE documentation system. The MooseDocs capability, which enables robust documentation of MOOSE-based applications, has been extended to allow both for the installation of documentation and the packaging of documentation with installed applications. Together, these enhancements form the core of a new, secure distribution mechanism for nuclear simulation tools. In concert with the Nuclear Computational Resource Center (NCRC), NEAMS- developed applications will now be straightforward to obtain securely.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Understanding and Controlling Photoexcited Molecules in Complex Environments (Final Technical Report)

Predicting the outcome of a photochemical reaction is complicated by factors outside the scope of tradition theoretical chemistry. On such small scales, fluctuations of the environment render outcomes stochastic, nonadiabatic dynamics blur the separation between nuclear and electronic motion, and ultrafast relaxation renders typical assumptions of equilibrium inappropriate. This project aimed to elucidate and control nonadiabatic molecular dynamics in condensed phases. We developed accurate, efficient simulation tools to study irreversible molecular processes computational across a range of scales. We applied these methodological advances to study electron transfer under exotic conditions where spin and topology opened new pathways for reactivity. We also brought these ideas to bare on light harvesting systems, where energy and charge transport are coupled, and where long lifetimes can be deleterious to function. These advances helped to establish general principles for chemical efficiency and guide the design of nanoscale energy materials, molecular machines, and related technologies.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

A High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Element Method for Compressible Reacting Flows

High-order methods have recently been shown to be an effective tool for high-fidelity flow computations like direct numerical simulations and large eddy simulations due to their strong balance between accuracy and computational cost. In this work, a high-order discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method (DGSEM) is developed to solve the chemically reactive Euler equations encountered in high-speed combustion. To handle the disparate length and time scales associated with these equations, we develop a novel method which combines the spectral accuracy of the SEM with the flexibility of DG approach. Thus, the framework is well suited to capture turbulence in smooth regions of the flow, while maintaining numerical stability in the presence of shocks. The numerical method is implemented within the spectral element solver Nek5000. Validation cases are conducted for both non-reactive and reactive discontinuous flows to demonstrate the solver capability. In particular, canonical one-dimensional and two-dimensional detonation simulations are performed and the high-order numerical results are validated against available literature data.

computational fluid dynamics (CFD)↗

Software for Tool Design and Testing

Abstract—: The development of software for calculating the cutting parameters in the course of machining or in simulations is discussed. The software developed may be used to create and test new cutting tools.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Cognitive Model of Trust Dynamics Predicts Human Behavior within and between Two Games of Strategic Interaction with Computerized Confederate Agents

When playing games of strategic interaction, such as iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma and iterated Chicken Game, people exhibit specific within-game learning (e.g., learning a game’s optimal outcome) as well as transfer of learning between games (e.g., a game’s optimal outcome occurring at a higher proportion when played after another game). The reciprocal trust players develop during the first game is thought to mediate transfer of learning effects. Recently, a computational cognitive model using a novel trust mechanism has been shown to account for human behavior in both games, including the transfer between games. We present the results of a study in which we evaluate the model’s a priori predictions of human learning and transfer in 16 different conditions. The model’s predictive validity is compared against five model variants that lacked a trust mechanism. The results suggest that a trust mechanism is necessary to explain human behavior across multiple conditions, even when a human plays against a non-human agent. The addition of a trust mechanism to the other learning mechanisms within the cognitive architecture, such as sequence learning, instance-based learning, and utility learning, leads to better prediction of the empirical data. It is argued that computational cognitive modeling is a useful tool for studying trust development, calibration, and repair.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Comparative Analysis via CFD Simulation on the Impact of Graphite Anode Morphologies on the Discharge of a Lithium-Ion Battery

The morphology of electrode materials plays a crucial role in determining the performance of lithium-ion batteries. Traditional computational models often simplify graphite flakes as uniformly sized spheres, which limits their predictive accuracy. In this study, we present a computational workflow that overcomes these limitations by incorporating a more realistic representation of graphite morphologies. This workflow is designed to be flexible and reproducible, enabling efficient evaluation of electrochemical performance across diverse material structures. By exploring different graphite morphologies, our approach accelerates the optimization of material preparation techniques and processing conditions. Our findings reveal that incorporating greater morphological complexity leads to significant deviations from classical model predictions. Instead, our refined model offers a more accurate representation of battery discharge behavior, closely aligning with experimental data. This improvement underscores the importance of detailed morphological descriptions in advancing battery design and performance assessments. To promote accessibility and reproducibility, we provide the developed code for seamless integration with the COMSOL API, allowing researchers to implement and adapt it easily. This computational framework serves as a valuable tool for investigating the impact of graphite morphology on battery performance, bridging the gap between theoretical modeling and experimental validation to enhance lithium-ion battery technology.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Evaluating climate emulation: fundamental impulse testing of simple climate models

Abstract. Simple climate models (SCMs) are numerical representations of the Earth's gas cycles and climate system. SCMs are easy to use and computationally inexpensive, making them an ideal tool in both scientific and decision-making contexts (e.g., complex climate model emulation, parameter estimation experiments, climate metric calculations, and probabilistic analyses). Despite their prolific use, the fundamental responses of SCMs are often not directly characterized. In this study, we use fundamental impulse tests of three chemical species (CO2, CH4, and black carbon – BC) to understand the fundamental gas cycle and climate system responses of several comprehensive (Hector v2.0, MAGICC 5.3, MAGICC 6.0) and idealized (FAIR v1.0, AR5-IR) SCMs. We find that while idealized SCMs are widely used, they fail to capture the magnitude and timescales of global mean climate responses under emissions perturbations, which can produce biased temperature results. Comprehensive SCMs, which have physically based nonlinear forcing and carbon cycle representations, show improved responses compared to idealized SCMs. Even the comprehensive SCMs, however, fail to capture the response timescales to BC emission perturbations seen recently in two general circulation models. Some comprehensive SCMs also generally respond faster than more complex models to a 4×CO2 concentration perturbation, although this was not evident for lower perturbation levels. These results suggest where improvements should be made to SCMs. Further, we demonstrate here a set of fundamental tests that we recommend as a standard evaluation suite for any SCM. Fundamental impulse tests allow users to understand differences in model responses and the impact of model selection on results.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

An Integrated Modeling and Data Management Strategy for Cellulosic Biomass Production Decisions

Emerging cellulosic bioenergy markets can provide land managers with additional options for crop production decisions. Integrating dedicated bioenergy crops such as perennial grasses and short rotation woody species within the agricultural landscape can have positive impacts on several environmental processes including increased soil organic matter in degraded soils, reduced sediment loading in watersheds, lower green house gas (GHG) fluxes, and reduced nutrient loading in watersheds. Implementing this type of diverse bioenergy production system in a way that maximizes potential environmental benefits requires a dynamic integrated modeling and data management strategy. This paper presents a strategy for designing diverse bioenergy cropping systems within the existing row crop production landscape in the midwestern United States. The integrated model developed quantifies a wide range environmental processes including soil erosion from wind and water, soil organic matter changes, and soil GHG fluxes within a geospatial data management framework. This framework assembles and formats information from multiple spatial and temporal scales. The data assembled includes yield and productivity data from harvesting equipment at the 1m scale, surface topography data from LiDAR mapping at the less than 1m scale, soil data from US soil survey databases at the 10m to 100m scale, and climate data at the county scale. These models and data tools are assembled into an integrated computational environment that is used to determine sustainable removal rates for agricultural residues for bioenergy production at the sub-field scale under a wide range of land management practices. Using this integrated model, innovative management practices including cover cropping are then introduced and evaluated for their impact on bioenergy production and important environmental processes. The impacts of introducing dedicated energy crops onto high-risk landscape positions currently being manage in row crop production are also investigated.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

A Global System for Transportation Simulation and Visualization in Emergency Evacuation Scenarios

Simulation-based studies are frequently used for evacuation planning and decision making processes. Given the transportation systems complexity and data availability, most evacuation simulation models focus on certain geographic areas. With routine improvement of OpenStreetMap road networks and LandScanTM global population distribution data, we present WWEE, a uniform system for world-wide emergency evacuation simulations. WWEE uses unified data structure for simulation inputs. It also integrates a super-node trip distribution model as the default simulation parameter to improve the system computational performance. Two levels of visualization tools are implemented for evacuation performance analysis, including link-based macroscopic visualization and vehicle-based microscopic visualization. For left-hand and right-hand traffic patterns in different countries, the authors propose a mirror technique to experiment with both scenarios without significantly changing traffic simulation models. Ten cities in US, Europe, Middle East, and Asia are modeled for demonstration. With default traffic simulation models for fast and easy-to-use evacuation estimation and visualization, WWEE also retains the capability of interactive operation for users to adopt customized traffic simulation models. For the first time, WWEE provides a unified platform for global evacuation researchers to estimate and visualize their strategies performance of transportation systems under evacuation scenarios.

Emergency Evacuation↗

PHOENIX - Web-Based Application for Accessing Hanford Tank Monitoring Data - 16157

Data volume, complexity, and access issues pose severe challenges for analysts, regulators, and stakeholders interested in evaluating scientific data to support decision making at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has developed a suite of web applications known collectively as PHOENIX (PNNL-Hanford Online Environmental Information exchange) to address data access, transparency, and integration challenges through intuitive query, visualization, and analysis tools that are accessible via desktop computer or mobile device by simply accessing the application web page (http://phoenix.pnnl.gov). Beginning in 2013, DOE's Office of River Protection (ORP) has worked with PNNL to develop a PHOENIX Tank Farm application to provide access to, and visualization of, in-tank monitoring data that had only been available to the public as text downloads for almost two decades. The Tank Farm application's user-friendly web-interface allows the public, stakeholders, regulators, and program managers to quickly and easily visualize in-tank and ex-tank data, facilitating data transparency and high-level decisions related to tank operations and management. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

RELAP5-3D in the OECD-NEA HTGR Thermal Hydraulics Benchmark

The OECD-NEA HTGR Thermal Hydraulics benchmark uses data from the High Temperature Test Facility for a series of code-to-code and code-to-data exercises aimed at improving the state of knowledge on existing thermal hydraulics modeling and simulation tools for prismatic HTGR applications. This benchmark includes problems representing hot gas mixing in the lower plenum, the depressurized conduction cooldown accident and the pressurized conduction cooldown accident. This presentation discusses the benchmark and RELAP5-3D's role in that benchmark, including as a tool for predicting behavior in the core and as a tool for providing boundary conditions to computational fluid dynamics analysis in the lower plenum.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Neural Network Analysis of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Infrared Spectra

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and infrared (IR) spectroscopy are powerful chemical characterization techniques with broad general usage. However, the manual evaluation of the resulting spectra is time-consuming and requires significant expertise, preventing insights from being used in real-time applications. With recent advances in computation and artificial intelligence (AI), new tools are available for automating spectral interpretation. In this work, machine learning (ML) algorithms using 1-dimensional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were applied to identify common functional groups from spectral information. Raw spectra were collected virtually from the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Chemistry WebBook and processed into a suitable standard. Algorithm design was tailored to best fit the nature of the problem, with built-in flexibility to accommodate relevant parameters beyond the raw spectral input, specifically solvent identity and magnetic frequency for NMR. The predictive capability of the algorithm in identifying functional groups is displayed in several examples. This methodology has been compiled into a code repository and could easily be modified to adapt alternative data sources, including other spectrum types. To mitigate overfitting, a common problem in mathematical modeling where overfamiliarity with training data produces trends that are not representative of the general data, a novel metric was developed, referred to as Accufit. Accufit includes a parameter that penalizes substantial differences in the training accuracy and the accuracy of an independent validation set. Examples are presented showing the effectiveness of Accufit in maintaining the model’s predictive capability while controlling the overfitting when used as a custom metric for hyperparameter tuning.

Sturgill, James↗

Web-based, GPU-accelerated, Monte Carlo simulation and visualization of indirect radiation imaging detector performance

Purpose: Monte Carlo simulations play a vital role in the understanding of the fundamental limitations, design, and optimization of existing and emerging medical imaging systems. Efforts in this area have resulted in the development of a wide variety of open-source software packages. One such package, hybridMANTIS, uses a novel hybrid concept to model indirect scintillator detectors by balancing the computational load using dual CPU and graphics processing unit (GPU) processors, obtaining computational efficiency with reasonable accuracy. In this work, the authors describe two open-source visualization interfaces, webMANTIS and visualMANTIS to facilitate the setup of computational experiments via hybridMANTIS. Methods: The visualization tools visualMANTIS and webMANTIS enable the user to control simulation properties through a user interface. In the case of webMANTIS, control via a web browser allows access through mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. webMANTIS acts as a server back-end and communicates with an NVIDIA GPU computing cluster that can support multiuser environments where users can execute different experiments in parallel. Results: The output consists of point response and pulse-height spectrum, and optical transport statistics generated by hybridMANTIS. The users can download the output images and statistics through a zip file for future reference. In addition, webMANTIS provides a visualization window that displays a few selected optical photon path as they get transported through the detector columns and allows the user to trace the history of the optical photons. Conclusions: The visualization tools visualMANTIS and webMANTIS provide features such as on the fly generation of pulse-height spectra and response functions for microcolumnar x-ray imagers while allowing users to save simulation parameters and results from prior experiments. The graphical interfaces simplify the simulation setup and allow the user to go directly from specifying input parameters to receiving visual feedback for the model predictions.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

CDFG Extraction Tool for LLVM

With the dawn of the exascale era, computer scientists and engineers are faced with tremendous challenges across all facets of the HPC system - scalability, performance, reliability, and power consumption. In particular, the power-performance benefit from one processor generation to the next is seeing ever-diminishing returns and will require fundamental changes in the way we approach computation. In fact, it is likely that different applications will require different types of accelerators in order to meet power, performance, and reliability requirements at scale. One potential type of accelerator, a dataflow architecture, diverges from the traditional sequentially executed instruction model into one that reflects the inherent instruction-level parallelism in a program. This work presents the initial steps toward a tool that can extract the control-dataflow graph from an application.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The Computational Capacity of Mem-LRC Reservoirs

Reservoir computing has a emerged as a powerful tool in data-driven time series analysis. The possibility of utilizing hardware reservoirs as specialized co-processors has generated interest in the properties of electronic reservoirs, especially those based on memristors as the nonlinearity of these devices should translate to an improved nonlinear computational capacity of the reservoir. However, designing these reservoirs requires a detailed understanding of how memristive networks process information which has thus far been lacking. In this work, we derive an equation for general memristor-inductor-resistor-capacitor (MEM-LRC) reservoirs that includes all network and dynamical constraints explicitly. Utilizing this we undertake a study of the computational capacity of these reservoirs. We demonstrate that hardware reservoirs may be constructed with extensive memory capacity and that the presence of memristors enacts a tradeoff between memory capacity and nonlinear computational capacity. Here, using these principles, we design reservoirs to tackle problems in signal processing, paving the way for applying hardware reservoirs to high-dimensional spatiotemporal systems.

Circuits with memory↗

Promise of Graph Sparsification and Decomposition for Noise Reduction in QAOA: Analysis for Trapped-Ion Compilations

We develop new approximate compilation schemes that significantly reduce the expense of compiling the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) for solving the Max-Cut problem. Our main focus is on compilation with trapped-ion simulators using Pauli-X operations and all-to-all Ising Hamiltonian HIsing evolution generated by Molmer-Sorensen or optical dipole force interactions, though some of our results also apply to standard gate-based compilations. Our results are based on principles of graph sparsification and decomposition; the former reduces the number of edges in a graph while maintaining its cut structure, while the latter breaks a weighted graph into a small number of unweighted graphs. Though these techniques have been used as heuristics in various hybrid quantum algorithms, there have been no guarantees on their performance, to the best of our knowledge. This work provides the first provable guarantees using sparsification and decomposition to improve quantum noise resilience and reduce quantum circuit complexity. For quantum hardware that uses edge-by-edge QAOA compilations, sparsification leads to a direct reduction in circuit complexity. For trapped-ion quantum simulators implementing all-to-all HIsing pulses, we show that for a (1−ϵ) factor loss in the Max-Cut approximation (ϵ>0), our compilations improve the (worst-case) number of HIsing pulses from O(n2) to O(nlog(n/ϵ)) and the (worst-case) number of Pauli-X bit flips from O(n2) to O(nlog(n/ϵ)ϵ2) for n-node graphs. This is an asymptotic improvement for any constant ϵ>0. We demonstrate that significant improvements to the approximation ratio are obtained using decomposition in simulated trapped-ion experiments with dephasing noise. We further present a generic argument showing that sparsification results in an exponentially improved circuit fidelity lower bound in digital computing schemes based on one- and two-qubit gates, which are relevant to a wide variety of hardwares such as superconducting qubits and certain neutral atom or trapped ion setups, and more sophisticated noise models. We anticipate these approximate compilation techniques will be useful tools in a variety of future quantum computing experiments.

Moondra, Jai [Georgia Institute of Technology]↗