Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “high performance analytics”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 records

Optimizing Management of Persistent Data Structures in High-Performance Analytics

Large-scale data analytics workflows ingest massive input data into various data structures, including graphs and key-value datastores. These data structures undergo multiple transformations and computations and are typically reused in incremental and iterative analytics workflows. Persisting in-memory views of these data structures enables reusing them beyond the scope of a single program run while avoiding repetitive raw data ingestion overheads. Memory-mapped I/O enables persisting in-memory data structures without data serialization and deserialization overheads. However, memory-mapped I/O lacks the key feature of persisting consistent snapshots of these data structures for incremental ingestion and processing. The obstacles to efficient virtual memory snapshots using memory-mapped I/O include background writebacks outside the application’s control, and the significantly high storage footprint of such snapshots. To address these limitations, we present Privateer, a memory and storage management tool that enables storage-efficient virtual memory snapshotting while also optimizing snapshot I/O performance. Here, we integrated Privateer into Metall, a state-of-the-art persistent memory allocator for C++, and the Lightning Memory-Mapped Database (LMDB), a widely-used key-value datastore in data analytics and machine learning. Privateer optimized application performance by 1.22× when storing data structure snapshots to node-local storage, and up to 16.7× when storing snapshots to a parallel file system. Privateer also optimizes storage efficiency of incremental data structure snapshots by up to 11× using data deduplication and compression.

Computer science↗

Hadoop for High-Performance Climate Analytics: Use Cases and Lessons Learned

Scientific data services are a critical aspect of the NASA Center for Climate Simulations mission (NCCS). Hadoop, via MapReduce, provides an approach to high-performance analytics that is proving to be useful to data intensive problems in climate research. It offers an analysis paradigm that uses clusters of computers and combines distributed storage of large data sets with parallel computation. The NCCS is particularly interested in the potential of Hadoop to speed up basic operations common to a wide range of analyses. In order to evaluate this potential, we prototyped a series of canonical MapReduce operations over a test suite of observational and climate simulation datasets. The initial focus was on averaging operations over arbitrary spatial and temporal extents within Modern Era Retrospective- Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data. After preliminary results suggested that this approach improves efficiencies within data intensive analytic workflows, we invested in building a cyber infrastructure resource for developing a new generation of climate data analysis capabilities using Hadoop. This resource is focused on reducing the time spent in the preparation of reanalysis data used in data-model inter-comparison, a long sought goal of the climate community. This paper summarizes the related use cases and lessons learned.

analytics↗

Preliminary Evaluation of MapReduce for High-Performance Climate Data Analysis

MapReduce is an approach to high-performance analytics that may be useful to data intensive problems in climate research. It offers an analysis paradigm that uses clusters of computers and combines distributed storage of large data sets with parallel computation. We are particularly interested in the potential of MapReduce to speed up basic operations common to a wide range of analyses. In order to evaluate this potential, we are prototyping a series of canonical MapReduce operations over a test suite of observational and climate simulation datasets. Our initial focus has been on averaging operations over arbitrary spatial and temporal extents within Modern Era Retrospective- Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data. Preliminary results suggest this approach can improve efficiencies within data intensive analytic workflows.

Duffy, Daniel Q.↗

Evolving Storage and Cyber Infrastructure at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation

This talk will describe recent developments at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation, which is funded by NASAs Science Mission Directorate, and supports the specialized data storage and computational needs of weather, ocean, and climate researchers, as well as astrophysicists, heliophysicists, and planetary scientists. To meet requirements for higher-resolution, higher-fidelity simulations, the NCCS augments its High Performance Computing (HPC) and storage retrieval environment. As the petabytes of model and observational data grow, the NCCS is broadening data services offerings and deploying and expanding virtualization resources for high performance analytics.

Cyberinfrastructure↗

TPSAS-NF1676L-20739-DND

Overview of LaRC's Comprehensive Digital Transformation strategy. Includes foundational items such as modeling & simulation, big data analytics, high performance computing, and advanced information technology. Builds upon the foundation to recommend advanced "virtual capabilities," such as a virtual flight test capability to complement flight testing and wind tunnels.

Ed McLarney↗

Analytical screening of low emissions, high performance duct burners for supersonic cruise aircraft engines

An analytical screening study was conducted to identify duct burner concepts capable of providing low emissions and high performance in advanced supersonic engines. Duct burner configurations ranging from current augmenter technology to advanced concepts such as premix-prevaporized burners were defined. Aerothermal and mechanical design studies provided the basis for screening these configurations using the criteria of emissions, performance, engine compatibility, cost, weight and relative risk. Technology levels derived from recently defined experimental low emissions main burners are required to achieve both low emissions and high performance goals. A configuration based on the Vorbix (Vortex burning and mixing) combustor concept was analytically determined to meet the performance goals and is consistent with the fan duct envelope of a variable cycle engine. The duct burner configuration has a moderate risk level compatible with the schedule of anticipated experimental programs.

Lohmann, R. A.↗

Characterizing Reactor Operations from Realistic Simulated Environmental Samples: Combining High-Performance Computing and Data Analytics

Environmental sampling is a common technique employed by inspectors and facility operators in nuclear safeguards, proliferation detection, and process monitoring contexts. Interpreting measurements performed on samples or collections of samples and ensuring the information extracted is accurate and precise is difficult. To date, these analyses have relied on simulated data to enable systematic studies; however, these models are inherently limited by the fidelity of the models and the implicit spatial averaging of isotopic composition or other signatures of interest. To advance this capability, we have refined the spatial discretization and expanded the range of physics in the simulation codes we use to perform reactor simulations and depletion calculations. This allows us to generate data that are more representative of real environmental samples, especially for the length scale of the isotopic composition and associated variation. Accordingly, these new data allow a more realistic assessment of traditional and new data analytic analysis methods. Here we present motivation for developing reactor simulations using high-performance computing methods and resources, impacts of these new simulations on our assessment of data analysis and interpretation methods, and initial results of developing and systematically testing data analytic methods designed to overcome the challenges expected of real-world samples. We also quantify the performance of these analyses using defensible statistical methods.

Dayman, Ken J.↗

A three-dimensional finite-element thermal/mechanical analytical technique for high-performance traveling wave tubes

Current research in high-efficiency, high-performance traveling wave tubes (TWT's) has led to the development of novel thermal/mechanical computer models for use with helical slow-wave structures. A three-dimensional, finite element computer model and analytical technique used to study the structural integrity and thermal operation of a high-efficiency, diamond-rod, K-band TWT designed for use in advanced space communications systems. This analysis focused on the slow-wave circuit in the radiofrequency section of the TWT, where an inherent localized heating problem existed and where failures were observed during earlier cold compression, or 'coining' fabrication technique that shows great potential for future TWT development efforts. For this analysis, a three-dimensional, finite element model was used along with MARC, a commercially available finite element code, to simulate the fabrication of a diamond-rod TWT. This analysis was conducted by using component and material specifications consistent with actual TWT fabrication and was verified against empirical data. The analysis is nonlinear owing to material plasticity introduced by the forming process and also to geometric nonlinearities presented by the component assembly configuration. The computer model was developed by using the high efficiency, K-band TWT design but is general enough to permit similar analyses to be performed on a wide variety of TWT designs and styles. The results of the TWT operating condition and structural failure mode analysis, as well as a comparison of analytical results to test data are presented.

Shalkhauser, Kurt A.↗

A three-dimensional finite-element thermal/mechanical analytical technique for high-performance traveling wave tubes

Current research in high-efficiency, high-performance traveling wave tubes (TWT's) has led to the development of novel thermal/ mechanical computer models for use with helical slow-wave structures. A three-dimensional, finite element computer model and analytical technique used to study the structural integrity and thermal operation of a high-efficiency, diamond-rod, K-band TWT designed for use in advanced space communications systems. This analysis focused on the slow-wave circuit in the radiofrequency section of the TWT, where an inherent localized heating problem existed and where failures were observed during earlier cold compression, or 'coining' fabrication technique that shows great potential for future TWT development efforts. For this analysis, a three-dimensional, finite element model was used along with MARC, a commercially available finite element code, to simulate the fabrication of a diamond-rod TWT. This analysis was conducted by using component and material specifications consistent with actual TWT fabrication and was verified against empirical data. The analysis is nonlinear owing to material plasticity introduced by the forming process and also to geometric nonlinearities presented by the component assembly configuration. The computer model was developed by using the high efficiency, K-band TWT design but is general enough to permit similar analyses to be performed on a wide variety of TWT designs and styles. The results of the TWT operating condition and structural failure mode analysis, as well as a comparison of analytical results to test data are presented.

Bartos, Karen F.↗

Analytical design of a high performance stability and control augmentation system for a hingeless rotor helicopter

A stability and control augmentation system (SCAS) was designed based on a set of comprehensive performance criteria. Linear optimal control theory was applied to determine appropriate feedback gains for the stability augmentation system (SAS). The helicopter was represented by six-degree-of-freedom rigid body equations of motion and constant factors were used as weightings for state and control variables. The ratio of these factors was employed as a parameter for SAS analysis and values of the feedback gains were selected on this basis to satisfy three of the performance criteria for full and partial state feedback systems. A least squares design method was then applied to determine control augmentation system (CAS) cross feed gains to satisfy the remaining seven performance criteria. The SCAS gains were then evaluated by nine degree-of-freedom equations which include flapping motion and conclusions drawn concerning the necessity of including the pitch/regressing and roll/regressing modes in SCAS analyses.

Miyajima, K.↗

MISPR : an open-source package for high-throughput multiscale molecular simulations

Computational tools provide a unique opportunity to study and design optimal materials by enhancing our ability to comprehend the connections between their atomistic structure and functional properties. However, designing materials with tailored functionalities is complicated due to the necessity to integrate various computational-chemistry software (not necessarily compatible with one another), the heterogeneous nature of the generated data, and the need to explore vast chemical and parameter spaces. The latter is especially important to avoid bias in scattered data points-based models and derive statistical trends only accessible by systematic datasets. Here, we introduce a robust high-throughput multi-scale computational infrastructure coined MISPR (Materials Informatics for Structure–Property Relationships) that seamlessly integrates classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with density functional theory (DFT). By enabling high-performance data analytics and coupling between different methods and scales, MISPR addresses critical challenges arising from the needs of automated workflow management and data provenance recording. The major features of MISPR include automated DFT and MD simulations, error handling, derivation of molecular and ensemble properties, and creation of output databases that organize results from individual calculations to enable reproducibility and transparency. In this work, we describe fully automated DFT workflows implemented in MISPR to compute various properties such as nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shift, binding energy, bond dissociation energy, and redox potential with support for multiple methods such as electron transfer and proton-coupled electron transfer reactions. The infrastructure also enables the characterization of large-scale ensemble properties by providing MD workflows that calculate a wide range of structural and dynamical properties in liquid solutions. MISPR employs the methodologies of materials informatics to facilitate understanding and prediction of phenomenological structure–property relationships, which are crucial to designing novel optimal materials for numerous scientific applications and engineering technologies.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Elastic Resource Management for Deep Learning Applications in a Container Cluster

The increasing demand for learning from massive datasets is restructuring our economy. Effective learning, however, involves nontrivial computing resources. Most businesses utilize commercial infrastructure providers (e.g., AWS) to host their computing clusters in the cloud, where various jobs compete for available resources. While cloud resource management is a fruitful research field that has made many advances in production, such as Kubernetes and YARN, few efforts have been invested to further optimize the system performance, especially for deep learning (DL) training jobs in a container cluster. This work introduces FlowCon, a system that is able to monitor the individual evaluation functions of DL jobs at runtime, and thus to make placement decisions on resource allocations elastically. Here, we present a detailed design and implementation of FlowCon and conduct intensive experiments over various DL models. The results demonstrate that FlowCon significantly improves DL job completion time and resource utilization efficiency, compared to default systems. According to the results, FlowCon is able to improve the completion time by up to 68.8% and meanwhile, reduce the makespan by 18.0%, in the presence of various DL job workloads.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Performance Characteristics of the BlueField-2 SmartNIC

High-performance computing (HPC) researchers have long envisioned scenarios where application workflows could be improved through the use of programmable processing elements embedded in the network fabric. Recently, vendors have introduced programmable Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) that enable computations to be offloaded to the edge of the network. There is great interest in both the HPC and high-performance data analytics (HPDA) communities in understanding the roles these devices may play in the data paths of upcoming systems. This paper focuses on characterizing both the networking and computing aspects of NVIDIA’s new BlueField-2 SmartNIC when used in a 100Gb/s Ethernet environment. For the networking evaluation we conducted multiple transfer experiments between processors located at the host, the SmartNIC, and a remote host. These tests illuminate how much effort is required to saturate the network and help estimate the processing headroom available on the SmartNIC during transfers. For the computing evaluation we used the stress-ng benchmark to compare the BlueField-2 to other servers and place realistic bounds on the types of offload operations that are appropriate for the hardware. Our findings from this work indicate that while the BlueField-2 provides a flexible means of processing data at the network’s edge, great care must be taken to not overwhelm the hardware. While the host can easily saturate the network link, the SmartNIC’s embedded processors may not have enough computing resources to sustain more than half the expected bandwidth when using kernel-space packet processing. From a computational perspective, encryption operations, memory operations under contention, and on-card IPC operations on the SmartNIC perform significantly better than the general-purpose servers used for comparisons in our experiments. Therefore, applications that mainly focus on these operations may be good candidates for offloading to the SmartNIC.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Singleton Sieving: Overcoming the Memory/Speed Trade-Off in Exascale k-mer Analysis

Traditional filter data structures, such as Bloom filters, do not offer necessary features that modern high-performance data analytics applications need in order to efficiently perform complex data analysis tasks. For example, MetaHipMer, a de novo metagenome assembler, can use filters to weed out singleton k-mers and reduce memory usage by 30%-70%. However, the filter needs the ability to associate values with k-mers in order to perform the analysis in a single communication pass. Bloom filters do not support value associations and cause the application to perform an extra communication pass, thereby increasing the run time. Therefore, MetaHipMer faces a trade off between memory and speed due to the limited capabilities of traditional filters. In this paper, we overcome the memory and speed trade off in MetaHipMer by integrating a GPU-based feature-rich filter, the Two-Choice filter (TCF), in the MetaHipMer pipeline. The TCF uses key-value association to approximately store k-mers with extensions. This allows MetaHipMer to perform k-mer analysis on the GPUs in a single communication pass. Our empirical analysis shows a 50% reduction in memory usage in k-mer analysis on each node in MetaHipMer without any effect on the overall run time or assembly quality. The memory reduction in turn results in a 43% reduction in the number of nodes required to assemble datasets and enables MetaHipMer to scale to much larger datasets.

McCoy, Hunter↗

Biological Research and Space Health Enabled by Machine Learning to Support Deep Space Missions

A key science goal of the NASA “Moon to Mars” campaign is to understand how biology responds to the Lunar, Martian, and deep space environments in order to advance fundamental knowledge, reduce risk, and support safe, productive human space missions. Through the powerful emerging computer science approaches of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), a paradigm shift has begun in biomedical science and engineered astronaut health systems, to enable Earth-independence and autonomy of mission operations. We present a decadal view of AI/ML architecture to support deep space mission goals, developed in concert with leaders in the field. We describe current AI/ML methods to support 1) fundamental biology, 2) in situ analytics, 3) high performance computing hardware, 4) automated science, 5) self-driving labs, 6) remote data management, 7) integrated real-time mission biomonitoring, and 8) a Precision Space Health system. Cutting-edge AI/ML approaches that can be integrated to support these domains include active learning, explainable AI, adaptive learning, causal inference, knowledge graphs, federated learning, transfer learning, and large language models. Finally, we present results from several current ML projects that are underway in the field to address key challenges of small sample n, high feature count, heterogeneity, and sparse data. These include 1) connecting omics data to phenotypic data using an ensemble model to infer causality of spaceflight rodent liver health disruption, 2) usage of explainable ML to interrogate the muscular underpinnings of spaceflight muscle atrophy, 3) ML models analyzing and determining directed acyclic graphs of human space health risk leveraging rodent bone datasets, 4) usage of large pre-trained models connecting biomedical knowledgebases with small spaceflight datasets to understand gene-to-gene interaction networks, and 5) a suite of benchmarked open science datasets (spaceflight mouse liver; radiation DNA damage) enabling programmers to identify the best ML algorithms to answer space biological science questions.

space biology↗

Biological Research and Space Health Enabled by Machine Learning to Support Deep Space Missions

A key science goal of the NASA “Moon to Mars” campaign is to understand how biology responds to the Lunar, Martian, and deep space environments in order to advance fundamental knowledge and support human space missions. Through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), a paradigm shift has begun in space biosciences and engineered astronaut health systems, to enable Earth-independence and mission operations autonomy. We describe current AI/ML methods to support 1) fundamental biology, 2) in situ analytics, 3) high performance computing, 4) automated science, 5) self-driving labs, 6) remote data management, 7) integrated mission biomonitoring, and 8) a Precision Space Health system. AI/ML approaches that can be integrated to support these domains include active learning, explainable AI, adaptive learning, causal inference, knowledge graphs, federated learning, transfer learning, and large language models. Finally, we present results from several current ML projects that are underway in the space biology field to address key challenges of small sample n, high feature count, heterogeneity, and sparse data. These include 1) connecting omics to phenotypic data using an ensemble model to infer causality of rodent liver health disruption, 2) usage of explainable ML to interrogate muscular underpinnings of muscle atrophy, 3) ML models analyzing and determining directed acyclic graphs of human health risk leveraging rodent bone datasets, 4) usage of large pre-trained models connecting biomedical knowledgebases with small spaceflight datasets to understand gene-to-gene interactions, and 5) a suite of benchmarked open science datasets enabling programmers to identify best algorithms to answer space biology questions.

space biology↗

Biological Research and Space Health Enabled by Machine Learning to Support Deep Space Missions

A key science goal of the NASA “Moon to Mars” campaign is to understand how biology responds to the Lunar, Martian, and deep space environments in order to advance fundamental knowledge, reduce risk, and support safe, productive human space missions. Through the powerful emerging computer science approaches of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), a paradigm shift has begun in biomedical science and engineered astronaut health systems, to enable Earth-independence and autonomy of mission operations. We present a decadal view of AI/ML architecture to support deep space mission goals, developed in concert with leaders in the field. We describe current AI/ML methods to support 1) fundamental biology, 2) in situ analytics, 3) high performance computing hardware, 4) automated science, 5) self-driving labs, 6) remote data management, 7) integrated real-time mission biomonitoring, and 8) a Precision Space Health system. Cutting-edge AI/ML approaches that can be integrated to support these domains include active learning, explainable AI, adaptive learning, causal inference, knowledge graphs, federated learning, transfer learning, and large language models. Finally, we present results from several current ML projects that are underway in the field to address key challenges of small sample n, high feature count, heterogeneity, and sparse data. These include 1) connecting omics data to phenotypic data using an ensemble model to infer causality of spaceflight rodent liver health disruption, 2) usage of explainable ML to interrogate the muscular underpinnings of spaceflight muscle atrophy, 3) ML models analyzing and determining directed acyclic graphs of human space health risk leveraging rodent bone datasets, 4) usage of large pre-trained models connecting biomedical knowledgebases with small spaceflight datasets to understand gene-to-gene interaction networks, and 5) a suite of benchmarked open science datasets (spaceflight mouse liver; radiation DNA damage) enabling programmers to identify the best ML algorithms to answer space biological science questions.

space biology↗

High performance N2O4/amine elements

An analytical and experimental investigation was conducted to develop an understanding of the mechanisms that cause reactive stream separation, commonly called blowapart, for hypergolic propellants. The investigation was limited to a N2O4/MMH propellant combination and to a range of engine-operating conditions applicable to the space tug and space shuttle attitude control and orbital maneuvering engines. Primary test variables were: chamber pressure (1 to 20 atm), fuel injection temperature (283 to 400 K)m and propellant injection velocity (9 to 50 m/s). The injector configuration studied was the unlike doublet. The reactive stream separation experiments were conducted using special combustors designed to permit photography of the near-injector spray combustion flow field. Analysis of color motion pictures provided the means of determining the occurrence of reactive stream separation.

Falk, A. Y.↗