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At least 19 records

Extending molecular simulation time scales: Parallel in time integrations for high-level quantum chemistry and complex force representations

Parallel in time simulation algorithms are presented and applied to conventional molecular dynamics (MD) and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) models of realistic complexity. Assuming that a forward time integrator, f (e.g., Verlet algorithm), is available to propagate the system from time t{sub i} (trajectory positions and velocities x{sub i} = (r{sub i}, v{sub i})) to time t{sub i+1} (x{sub i+1}) by x{sub i+1} = f{sub i}(x{sub i}), the dynamics problem spanning an interval from t{sub 0}…t{sub M} can be transformed into a root finding problem, F(X) = [x{sub i} − f(x{sub (i−1})]{sub i} {sub =1,M} = 0, for the trajectory variables. The root finding problem is solved using a variety of root finding techniques, including quasi-Newton and preconditioned quasi-Newton schemes that are all unconditionally convergent. The algorithms are parallelized by assigning a processor to each time-step entry in the columns of F(X). The relation of this approach to other recently proposed parallel in time methods is discussed, and the effectiveness of various approaches to solving the root finding problem is tested. We demonstrate that more efficient dynamical models based on simplified interactions or coarsening time-steps provide preconditioners for the root finding problem. However, for MD and AIMD simulations, such preconditioners are not required to obtain reasonable convergence and their cost must be considered in the performance of the algorithm. The parallel in time algorithms developed are tested by applying them to MD and AIMD simulations of size and complexity similar to those encountered in present day applications. These include a 1000 Si atom MD simulation using Stillinger-Weber potentials, and a HCl + 4H{sub 2}O AIMD simulation at the MP2 level. The maximum speedup ((serial execution time)/(parallel execution time) ) obtained by parallelizing the Stillinger-Weber MD simulation was nearly 3.0. For the AIMD MP2 simulations, the algorithms achieved speedups of up to 14.3. The parallel in time algorithms can be implemented in a distributed computing environment using very slow transmission control protocol/Internet protocol networks. Scripts written in Python that make calls to a precompiled quantum chemistry package (NWChem) are demonstrated to provide an actual speedup of 8.2 for a 2.5 ps AIMD simulation of HCl + 4H{sub 2}O at the MP2/6-31G* level. Implemented in this way these algorithms can be used for long time high-level AIMD simulations at a modest cost using machines connected by very slow networks such as WiFi, or in different time zones connected by the Internet. The algorithms can also be used with programs that are already parallel. Using these algorithms, we are able to reduce the cost of a MP2/6-311++G(2d,2p) simulation that had reached its maximum possible speedup in the parallelization of the electronic structure calculation from 32 s/time step to 6.9 s/time step.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

A space-time parallel algorithm with adaptive mesh refinement for computational fluid dynamics

This work describes a space-time parallel algorithm with space-time adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). AMR with subcycling is added to multigrid reduction-in-time (MGRIT) in order to provide solution efficient adaptive grids with a reduction in work performed on coarser grids. This algorithm is achieved by integrating two software libraries: XBraid (Parallel time integration with multigrid. https://computation.llnl.gov/projects/parallel-timeintegration-multigrid) and Chombo (Chombo software package for AMR applications—design document, 2014). The former is a parallel time integration library using multigrid and the latter is a massively parallel structured AMR library. Employing this adaptive space-time parallel algorithm is Chord (Comput Fluids 123:202–217, 2015), a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) application code for solving compressible fluid dynamics problems. For the same solution accuracy, speedups are demonstrated from the use of space-time parallelization over the time-sequential integration on Couette flow and Stokes’ second problem. On a transient Couette flow case, at least a 1.5× speedup is achieved, and with a time periodic problem, a speedup of up to 13.7× over the time-sequential case is obtained. In both cases, the speedup is achieved by adding processors and exploring additional parallelization in time. The numerical experiments show the algorithm is promising for CFD applications that can take advantage of the time parallelism. Future work will focus on improving the parallel performance and providing more tests with complex fluid dynamics to demonstrate the full potential of the algorithm.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Parallel time integration software

This package implements an optimal-scaling multigrid solver for the (non) linear systems that arise from the discretization of problems with evolutionary behavior. Typically, solution algorithms for evolution equations are based on a time-marching approach, solving sequentially for one time step after the other. Parallelism in these traditional time-integrarion techniques is limited to spatial parallelism. However, current trends in computer architectures are leading twards system with more, but not faster. processors. Therefore, faster compute speeds must come from greater parallelism. One approach to achieve parallelism in time is with multigrid, but extending classical multigrid methods for elliptic poerators to this setting is a significant achievement. In this software, we implement a non-intrusive, optimal-scaling time-parallel method based on multigrid reduction techniques. The examples in the package demonstrate optimality of our multigrid-reduction-in-time algorithm (MGRIT) for solving a variety of parabolic equations in two and three sparial dimensions. These examples can also be used to show that MGRIT can achieve significant speedup in comparison to sequential time marching on modern architectures.

Source record↗

Parallel time integration software

This package implements an optimal-scaling multigrid solver for the (non) linear systems that arise from the discretization of problems with evolutionary behavior. Typically, solution algorithms for evolution equations are based on a time-marching approach, solving sequentially for one time step after the other. Parallelism in these traditional time-integrarion techniques is limited to spatial parallelism. However, current trends in computer architectures are leading twards system with more, but not faster. processors. Therefore, faster compute speeds must come from greater parallelism. One approach to achieve parallelism in time is with multigrid, but extending classical multigrid methods for elliptic poerators to this setting is a significant achievement. In this software, we implement a non-intrusive, optimal-scaling time-parallel method based on multigrid reduction techniques. The examples in the package demonstrate optimality of our multigrid-reduction-in-time algorithm (MGRIT) for solving a variety of parabolic equations in two and three sparial dimensions. These examples can also be used to show that MGRIT can achieve significant speedup in comparison to sequential time marching on modern architectures.

Source record↗

A high-order time-parallel scheme for solving wave propagation problems via the direct construction of an approximate time-evolution operator

Our manuscript demonstrates a technique for efficiently solving the classical wave equation, the shallow water equations, and, more generally, equations of the form ∂u/∂t=Lu∂u/∂t=Lu, where LL is a skew-Hermitian differential operator. The idea is to explicitly construct an approximation to the time-evolution operator exp(τL)exp(τL) for a relatively large time-step ττ. Recently developed techniques for approximating oscillatory scalar functions by rational functions, and accelerated algorithms for computing functions of discretized differential operators are exploited. Principal advantages of the proposed method include: stability even for large time-steps, the possibility to parallelize in time over many characteristic wavelengths and large speed-ups over existing methods in situations where simulation over long times are required. Numerical examples involving the 2D rotating shallow water equations and the 2D wave equation in an inhomogenous medium are presented, and the method is compared to the 4th order Runge–Kutta (RK4) method and to the use of Chebyshev polynomials. The new method achieved high accuracy over long-time intervals, and with speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than both RK4 and the use of Chebyshev polynomials.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A time-parallel method for the solution of PDE-constrained optimization problems

We study a time-parallel approach to solving quadratic optimization problems with linear time-dependent partial differential equation (PDE) constraints. These problems arise in formulations of optimal control, optimal design and inverse problems that are governed by parabolic PDE models. They may also arise as subproblems in algorithms for the solution of optimization problems with nonlinear time-dependent PDE constraints, e.g., in sequential quadratic programming methods. We apply a piecewise linear finite element discretization in space to the PDE constraint, followed by the Crank-Nicolson discretization in time. The objective function is discretized using finite elements in space and the trapezoidal rule in time. At this point in the discretization, auxiliary state variables are introduced at each discrete time interval, with the goal to enable: (i) a decoupling in time; and (ii) a fixed-point iteration to recover the solution of the discrete optimality system. The fixed-point iterative schemes can be used either as preconditioners for Krylov subspace methods or as smoothers for multigrid (in time) schemes. We present promising numerical results for both use cases.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A time-parallel method for scalable heat transfer simulations of additive manufacturing

Here, a major challenge in simulating the thermal behavior in additive manufacturing processes is the disparate length and time scales between transport phenomena occurring in the melt pool and the component. A common simulation approach relies on spatial decomposition for parallel computing, but due to the nature of heat transfer in AM, where most of the computational expenditure is localized near the melt pool, the computational speedup from spatial parallelization saturates quickly. Therefore, additional parallelism by means of time-domain decomposition is needed to fully take advantage of high-performance computing (HPC) resources. This work introduces a time-parallel method to improve the computational scalability of additive manufacturing simulations on HPC systems, while maintaining high temporal resolution of heat transfer near the melt pool. The method, inspired by the nonlinear paraexp formalism, performs an iterative superposition of nonlinear solutions to the initial value problem, integrating the heat equation across overlapping time-parallel intervals. For a single layer of the NIST AMB2018–01 L7 benchmark problem, the method achieves a 38.51x speedup in wall-clock time with a maximum error in the global temperature solution of 0.99%. This reduces the total solution time from 196.72 min to 5.11 min on 128 nodes of the ORNL Frontier supercomputer. The tradeoff between accuracy and total wall-clock time is investigated and recommendations for time-parallel deployment for AM problems are made.

Additive manufacturing↗

Applying Time-Parallelization to Turbulent Flows

Parallelization of the temporal domain is explored for the solution of turbulent flows. Multigrid reduction-in-time (MGRIT) is used to advance the large-scale fluid dynamics in time sequentially on the coarsest space-time grid but propagate the information in time parallel on all other levels. The goal of this process is to accurately and efficiently resolve the coarse-scale turbulence structure and use that to drive the fine-scales of the turbulent flow. The extra forcing from nonlinear multigrid facilitates the coupling and interaction between fine and coarse scales, through which the multiscale nonlinear physics is properly captured. Adaptive mesh refinement is employed to finely resolve only the regions with strong gradients, which provides further computational efficiency. The underlying computational fluid dynamics solver is a fourth-order finite-volume scheme with the standard 4-stage Runge-Kutta method. An advanced approach is devised and implemented to enable MGRIT to solve highly turbulent flows successfully. Furthermore, the method is applied to solve a Taylor-Green vortex problem and a doubleshear-layer turbulent mixing flow. Results are promising, validating that MGRIT with the filtering approach has the potential to efficiently solve general turbulent flows.

Computational Fluid Dynamics↗

Time-parallel solutions to differential equations via functional optimization

We describe an approach to solving a generic time-dependent differential equation (DE) that recasts the problem as a functional optimization one. The techniques employed to solve for the functional minimum, which we relate to the Sobolev Gradient method, allow for large-scale parallelization in time, and therefore potential faster “wall-clock” time computing on machines with significant parallel computing capacity. We are able to come up with numerous different discretizations and approximations for our optimization-derived equations, each of which either puts an existing approach, the Parareal method, in an optimization context, or provides a new time-parallel (TP) scheme with potentially faster convergence to the DE solution. We describe how the approach is particularly effective for solving multiscale DEs and present TP schemes that incorporate two different solution scales. Sample results are provided for three differential equations, solved with TP schemes, and we discuss how the choice of TP scheme can have an orders of magnitude effect on the accuracy or convergence rate.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Parallel Time Integration: An Approaching Paradigm Shift for Scientific Computing

This note argues that parallel-in-time methods will be necessary for doing high-fidelity time-dependent simulations in the future. A “proof” is given to support the argument and to provide a framework for debate. The effect of a parallel-in-time paradigm on scientific computing practice is also discussed.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Parallel Time Integration for Constrained Optimization

The number of transistors in an average processor continues to increase, but individual clock speeds have plateaued. Those transistors are instead going into additional cores, increasing the number of different things that a processor can do at once and placing an emphasis on parallel computation. Many problems in scientific computing follow a time-evolution model, and it can be difficult to solve such problems in parallel across the temporal domain. The Multi-Grid Reduction In Time (MGRIT) algorithm, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), solves differential equations with a method designed specifically to take advantage of extreme numbers of processors by parallelizing across time. The Tri-diagonal MGRIT (TriMGRIT) algorithm, also developed at LLNL, is a generalization of MGRIT which enables parallel-in-time solving of a greater number of problems. Constrained optimization problems, in particular, may be solved in parallel using TriMGRIT. These consist of choosing a control function such that an objective functional is minimized, constrained by a differential-equation. We consider two such problems: applying torque to a pendulum to bring it to a gentle stop and moving a crowd of people from one distribution into another. We also perform some miscellaneous theoretical and practical research, including investigating the use of a line-search subroutine to refine intermediate TriMGRIT results and preliminary work on strategies for choosing operators for TriMGRIT to use.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Applying Reduced Generator Models in the Coarse Solver of Parareal in Time Parallel Power System Simulation

The development of high-performance computing techniques and platforms has provided many opportunities for real-time or even faster-than-real-time implementation of power system simulations. One approach uses the Parareal in time framework. The Parareal algorithm has shown promising theoretical simulation speedups by temporal decomposing a simulation run into a coarse simulation on the entire simulation interval and fine simulations on sequential sub-intervals linked through the coarse simulation. However, it has been found that the time cost of the coarse solver needs to be reduced to fully exploit the potentials of the Parareal algorithm. This paper studies a Parareal implementation using reduced generator models for the coarse solver and reports the testing results on the IEEE 39-bus system and a 327-generator 2383-bus Polish system model.

High-performance computing↗

A time-parallel multiple-shooting method for large-scale quantum optimal control

Quantum optimal control plays a crucial role in quantum computing by providing the interface between compiler and hardware. Solving the optimal control problem is particularly challenging for multi-qubit gates, due to the exponential growth in computational complexity with the system's dimensionality and the deterioration of optimization convergence. To ameliorate the computational complexity of time-integration, this paper introduces a multiple-shooting approach in which the time domain is divided into multiple windows and the intermediate states at window boundaries are treated as additional optimization variables. Further, this enables parallel computation of state evolution across time-windows, significantly accelerating objective function and gradient evaluations. Since the initial state matrix in each window is only guaranteed to be unitary upon convergence of the optimization algorithm, the conventional gate trace infidelity is replaced by a generalized infidelity that is convex for non-unitary state matrices. Continuity of the state across window boundaries is enforced by equality constraints. A quadratic penalty optimization method is used to solve the constrained optimal control problem, and an efficient adjoint technique is employed to calculate the gradients in each iteration. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through numerical experiments on quantum Fourier transform gates in systems with 2, 3, and 4 qubits, noting a speedup of 80x for evaluating the gradient in the 4-qubit case, highlighting the method's potential for optimizing control pulses in multi-qubit quantum systems.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

A 32-channel photon counting module with embedded auto/cross-correlators for real-time parallel fluorescence correlation spectroscopy

Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) is a well-established technique to study binding interactions or the diffusion of fluorescently labeled biomolecules in vitro and in vivo. Fast FCS experiments require parallel data acquisition and analysis which can be achieved by exploiting a multi-channel Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) array and a corresponding multi-input correlator. This paper reports a 32-channel FPGA based correlator able to perform 32 auto/cross-correlations simultaneously over a lag-time ranging from 10 ns up to 150 ms. The correlator is included in a 32 × 1 SPAD array module, providing a compact and flexible instrument for high throughput FCS experiments. However, some inherent features of SPAD arrays, namely afterpulsing and optical crosstalk effects, may introduce distortions in the measurement of auto- and cross-correlation functions. We investigated these limitations to assess their impact on the module and evaluate possible workarounds.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗