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It is another success for the long-standing collaboration between the University of Delaware (USA) and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR): In a competitive bid to gain access to the planned US supercomputer Discovery, the joint project PIConGPU is among the nine that got green-lighted in mid-June. The team’s proposal features an artificial intelligence-powered approach that aims to identify only those high-fidelity simulations that are most relevant for solving a given scientific problem. These are the ones that will actually be calculated. At HZDR, the institutes Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) and Institute of Radiation Physics co-lead the PIConGPU project.
“We succeeded in the first CAAR program in 2019, when the world’s first exascale computer, Frontier, was built and optimized,” remembers CASUS Research Team Leader Dr. Michael Bussmann. “This unique opportunity really propelled us forward, as it allowed us to prepare PIConGPU early on for exascale computing, which later on resulted in being included in the Research and Early Access Program for JUPITER, the first European exascale computer at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. That’s why we’re incredibly proud to have made it also into the CAAR program for Discovery.” Bussmann hopes that the team will be able, for the first time, to combine large artificial intelligence (AI) models with high-resolution simulations in order to determine the correct operating parameters for new technologies such as laser particle accelerators and laser fusion facilities.
Laser-driven fusion, in particular, is currently gaining momentum as a potential energy source. A key challenge is the energy transfer from the lasers to the fusion targets. Nanostructured targets are widely considered to boost absorption and energy coupling, but finding the right materials and geometry is challenging. The demand for experiments is many times greater than the capacity available at research facilities. This is where simulations prove to be extremely useful. But the supply-and-demand situation is no different when it comes to high-performance computers. Discovery’s increased performance will allow PIConGPU to run high-fidelity simulations using AI-driven multi-objective optimization. Thanks to this optimization step, only the most informative runs are selected and executed, ensuring that the limited supercomputer capacity is used as efficiently as possible.
AI calculations move from Frontier to Discovery
Discovery will be delivered in 2028 at the latest and is planned to go into operation in 2029. It will have with significantly greater performance than Frontier and it features a computing cluster optimized for AI calculations. This cluster will be installed as early as this year. In combination with Discovery, it will be perfectly suited for AI-assisted simulations. Until Discovery’s launch, the AI cluster will be combined with Frontier. Prof. Sunita Chandrasekaran from the University of Delaware rejoices: “Given that we have expanded PIConGPU with several AI-based optimizations over the past two years, we had secretly hoped to be selected for the Discovery CAAR program. When we received the notification, we were nevertheless overjoyed.”
Bussmann adds that important progress was also achieved on European infrastructure: “A major factor was that the HZDR is part of the EuroHPC Center of Excellence PlasmaPEPSC. Access to European exascale computers such as JUPITER via PlasmaPEPSC ensures that we always remain at the forefront of research.”
PIconGPU is based on the hardware-agnostic library Alpaka which allows an efficient adoption of existing software to new hardware. PIConGPU is the abbreviation of Particle-In-Cell on Graphics Processing Unit. The open-source code is used by scientists to study laser-plasma interactions in particle accelerator development for radiation therapy of cancer, in high-energy physics or in photon research. PIConGPU has been in continuous development for more than ten years.
Team PIConGPU – the only international project
The other eight projects selected in the call for proposals were, without exception, put forward by applicants from the United States: from industrial companies such as General Electric, national research laboratories such as Caltech, or federal agencies such as NASA. The submissions were evaluated based on their potential for scientific advancements and the ability to solve grand challenge problems designed to push the limits of Discovery’s computational capabilities. Another key requirement was that each project team had to demonstrate that it could utilize the “Discovery” hardware so effectively that the application will likely run three to five times faster than on “Frontier.”
The Discovery supercomputer will be built at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a research and development center based in the town of Oak Ridge (USA). Discovery continues ORNL’s tradition of providing flagship supercomputers, of which it has deployed a total of seven since 2004. Each of the last four machines – Jaguar, Titan, Summit and Frontier – were recognized as the world’s fastest system at the time. Thanks to the collaboration of HZDR scientists with the Chandrasekaran, the PIConGPU simulation software had already been granted running time on Summit and Frontier. In the case of Frontier, the ORNL partnered with application developers and vendor partners though a Center for Accelerated Application Readiness (CAAR) program.
Dr. Michael Bussmann | Research Team Leader
Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at HZDR
email: m.bussmann@hzdr.de
https://www.casus.science/news-early-access-to-ai-era-supercomputer-granted/
Laser-plasma interaction
Copyright: R. Pausch/HZDR
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Laser-plasma interaction
Copyright: R. Pausch/HZDR
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