HPCwire: Supercomputing Keys Fusion Research

The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing

HPCwire >> Features

February 16, 2007

Supercomputing Keys Fusion Research

--A Conversation with Zhihong Lin

by Leo Williams, ORNL, for HPCwire

Page: 1 of 3
1 | 2 | 3 All »

University of California, Irvine, physicist Zhihong Lin is at the forefront of fusion simulation, using Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL's) "Jaguar" Cray XT3 system to simulate microturbulence in magnetically confined thermonuclear plasmas.

Lin is a member of the "Center for Gyrokinetic Particle Simulation of Turbulent Transport in Burning Plasmas" (GPSC), a fusion energy SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) project led by W. W. Lee of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Lin is the original developer of the Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC) [See "ORNL's Jaguar Fastest for Fusion Turbulence Simulations," http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/943289.html], which is the flagship code at UC–Irvine and PPPL for studying plasma microturbulence in advanced fusion systems.

He was recently named a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), which recognized him "for fundamental contributions to the understanding of zonal flows and turbulence spreading and to the pioneering development of massively parallel gyrokinetic particle simulations on modern leadership class supercomputers."

In this interview, Lin talks about his work, the importance of simulation to fusion research, and the people who influenced his career.

HPCwire: Congratulations on being named an APS fellow. Please describe briefly the work that led to this honor.

Lin: Thank you. My primary area of research interest is studying plasma turbulence and transport via large-scale particle simulations using massively parallel supercomputers. Turbulent transport is one of the most important scientific challenges in burning plasma experiments such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is the crucial next step in the quest for fusion energy. Research advances in this application area can also be expected to help accelerate progress in understanding fundamental problems in space and astrophysical plasmas.

HPCwire: What is your relationship with other members of the ORNL and PPPL team?

Lin: The success of the GTC project is a result of the productive collaborations between many talented SciDAC GPSC researchers. I have close collaborations with GPS team members such as Dr. Scott Klasky at ORNL and Dr. Stephane Ethier at PPPL. I am currently the GTC team leader for the SciDAC GPSC project.

HPCwire: How did you get started using supercomputers in your research?

Lin: My interest in parallel computing started in graduate school and was inspired by the vision of my mentor at Princeton University, Prof. Bill Tang. Near the end of my PhD thesis project, I spent 2 months during the summer of 1994 at the Advanced Computing Laboratory at LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] to learn how to use a parallel computer -- CM-5, made by Thinking Machines Corporation -- with a language called CMFortran. During the last week of my stay at LANL, Thinking Machines Corporation went bankrupt. Nonetheless, I did learn the basics of parallel programming.

Page: 1 of 3
1 | 2 | 3 All »

Article Tools

Share Options

(Digg, Technorati, more)

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPCwire

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

You must be a registered user in order to comment on HPCwire stories.

Members enjoy:

	Access to Special Content, including Podcasts, Webcasts, and Whitepapers and more!
	Ability to take an active role in the discussions that are shaping the HPC technology discipline!
	Special offers available only to HPCwire members!

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in Here to Comment

Email Address:	Password (case sensitive)

Remember me	Forgot Password?

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Top Headlines

Can Free Software Drive the Fourth Paradigm?

Mar 09 | Free Software Magazine | Data-driven computing will need open software. Read more...

Graphics Card Maker Turns to High-Performance Bioinformatics

Mar 09 | Bio-IT World | Tahoe Informatics founder eyes GPUs, CUDA software. Read more...

CFD: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Mar 08 | Sporting Life | Formula One engineers differ on benefits of CFD. Read more...

AMD Tries to Draw Intel Into Chip Battle

Mar 08 | InfoWorld | AMD offers up 48-core server prize. Read more...

HPC Madness: March Is More Cores Month

Mar 04 | Linux Magazine | The new x86 multicore offerings could portend big changes for HPC platforms. Read more...

Read more headlines...

Featured Whitepapers

Virtualization for Aggregation And The vSMP Architecture™

Jan 12 | | In-depth look at vSMP Foundation server virtualization technology, technical implementation, use cases and capabilities. The technical whitepaper provides an architectural overview and details on the three vSMP Foundation products: vSMP Foundation for SMP, vSMP Foundation for Cluster and vSMP Foundation for Cloud.

Copper Cable Technologies for High Performance Computing

Jan 18 | | This white paper discusses Gore’s copper cable assemblies, and how they continue to exceed the standards for providing reliable, cost-effective solutions for high-performance computer applications.

View the White Paper Library

Multimedia

Webcast: Virtualized Data Center Roundtable

Join this online panel discussion for live Q&A with leading industry experts, analysts, and end-users to discuss the latest innovations, best practices, barriers to implementation, and measurable benefits of server virtualization with a particular focus on today's real world solutions.

Webcast: Watch SC09 Birds of a Feather Video: Scalable Fault-Tolerant HPC Supercomputers

Learn about scalable fault-tolerant architectures and examples of energy efficient and scalable supercomputing clusters using dual QDR InfiniBand to combine capacity computing with network failover capabilities with the help of programming languages such as MPI and a robust Linux cluster management package.

Webcast: High Performance Computing for a Smarter Planet

LIVE@SCO9: The IBM team discusses new innovations in hardware, software and services that help clients better understand their workloads and get insight from their R&D efforts. Technology demonstrations include the soon-to-be-released Power7 HPC processor, the DCS990 system with 2.4 petabytes of storage, the xCAT management tool, secure HPC cloud computing and more. Winners of two HPCwire Readers' and Editors’ Choice Awards! Take the IBM virtual tour at SC09 or more information go online to: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/sc09.html