NCSA
HPCwire

Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them

Language Flags

Visit additional Tabor Communication Publications

Datanami
Digital Manufacturing Report
HPC in the Cloud
Green Computing Report

Tabor Communications
Corporate Video

Argonne Duo to Explore Alternative Sources of Energy


ARGONNE, Ill., Dec. 18 -- Two computational scientists in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory have been awarded a total of 37,500,000 hours of computing time on the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) to investigate safe and cost effective methods for developing nuclear energy.

Through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) allocations, Argonne researchers will conduct simulations of advanced nuclear energy research on the ALCF's energy-efficient IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer known as Intrepid. One of only two DOE leadership-class computers, Intrepid provides a peak performance of 556 teraflops. Calculations of this magnitude would not have been possible without resources at the Blue Gene/P scale.

Paul Fischer was awarded 30 million hours to carry out first-principles-based simulation and analysis of reactor core cooling. Andrew Siegel was awarded 7.5 million hours to conduct detailed numerical experiments of thermal striping in sodium-cooled fast reactors.

"Advanced simulation can greatly reduce facilities' costs by allowing us to better identify and target the physical experiments that underlie their design," said Siegel, the lab's nuclear simulation project leader.

Argonne's nuclear and chemical engineers are collaborating with the two computer scientists to develop precise computer simulations of the physical changes that would occur in next-generation nuclear systems, such as advanced fast reactors, which permit recycling of nuclear fuel and are expected to be economical sources of power.

"Argonne's modeling and simulation work in support of advanced nuclear energy systems is a natural outgrowth of Argonne's expertise in nuclear energy," said Ewing Lusk, director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne . "Access to the powerful Blue Gene/P in the ALCF will enable our computational scientists to conduct large-scale simulations and provide insight into major scientific issues."

Fischer and Siegel are also using simulation to explore other important aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including neutron transport, and fuel and structure behavior.

"The U.S. Department of Energy is moving toward greater reliance on computer simulation and modeling to conduct nuclear energy research," said Fischer. "We will use advanced simulation to gain insights into design improvements leading to increased safety and economy of advanced reactors."

Their research has the potential to dramatically expand the availability of safe, clean nuclear energy to help meet the growing global energy demand.

The awards are made through the 2009 INCITE program, which was established by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science six years ago to support computationally intensive, large-scale research projects.

About Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

-----

Source: Argonne National Laboratory

June 17, 2013

June 14, 2013

June 13, 2013

June 12, 2013

June 11, 2013

June 10, 2013

June 07, 2013

June 06, 2013

June 05, 2013


Most Read Features

Most Read Around the Web

Most Read This Just In

Asetek

Feature Articles

Intel Snaps New Grips to HPC Hook

Not content to let the Tianhe-2 announcement ride alone, Intel rolled out a series of announcements around its Knights Corner and Xeon Phi products--all of which are aimed at adding some options and variety for a wider base of potential users across the HPC spectrum. Today at the International Supercomputing Conference, the company's Raj....
Read more...

Top 500 Results Reveal Global Acceleration, Balance Shift

The Top 500 list of the world's fastest computers has just been announced. Not surprisingly, since it's been reported on prior to the official announcement, the Chinese Tianhe-2 system tops the list. And that is an understatement. We talk with Jack Dongarra, Horst Simon, Hans Meuer and others from the....
Read more...

Six Can't Miss Sessions for ISC'13

Outside of the main attractions, including the keynote sessions, vendor showdowns, Think Tank panels, BoFs, and tutorial elements, the International Supercomputing Conference has balanced its five-day agenda with some striking panels, discussions and topic areas that are worthy of some attention....
Read more...

Short Takes

Supercomputers: Still the King of the HPC Hill

Jun 17, 2013 | The advent of low-power mobile processors and cloud delivery models is changing the economics of computing. But just as an economy car is good at different things than a full size truck, an HPC workload still has certain computing demands that neither the fastest smartphone nor the most elastic cloud cluster can fulfill.
Read more...

TACC Longhorn Takes On Natural Language Processing

Jun 14, 2013 | For all the progress we've made in IT over the last 50 years, there's one area of life that has steadfastly eluded the grasp of computers: understanding human language. Now, researchers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are utilizing a Hadoop cluster on its Longhorn supercomputer to move the state of the art of language processing a little bit further.
Read more...

Titan Didn't Redo LINPACK for June Top 500 List

Jun 13, 2013 | Titan, the Cray XK7 at the Oak Ridge National Lab that debuted last fall as the fastest supercomputer in the world with 17.59 petaflops of sustained computing power, will rely on its previous LINPACK test for the upcoming edition of the Top 500 list.
Read more...

Top Supercomputer Signals Growth of Chinese HPC Industry

Jun 12, 2013 | At 31 petaflops of sustained LINPACK capacity, the new Chinese Tianhe-2 supercomputer will be the fastest supercomputer in the world when this month's Top 500 list comes out, as we reported previously in HPCwire.
Read more...

Intel Says Haswell Chips Offer ISVs Full OpenCL Compatibility

Jun 12, 2013 | HPC system makers are lining up to announce compatibility with the new fourth generation Intel Core processor, codenamed "Haswell." The new Iris GPUs based on the Haswell architecture are giving Intel new credibility in the graphics processing department.
Read more...

Sponsored Whitepapers

Best Practices in Big Data Storage

05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.

Progress in Parallel: the Bull Parallel Programming Center

04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.

Sponsored Multimedia

HPCwire Live! Atlanta's Big Data Kick Off Week Meets HPC

Join HPCwire Editor Nicole Hemsoth and Dr. David Bader from Georgia Tech as they take center stage on opening night at Atlanta's first Big Data Kick Off Week, filmed in front of a live audience. Nicole and David look at the evolution of HPC, today's big data challenges, discuss real world solutions, and reveal their predictions. Exactly what does the future holds for HPC?

Webinar: Mellanox Virtual Modular Switch, the Most Efficient 40GbE Aggregation Switch Solution

Join our webinar to learn how IT managers can migrate to a more resilient, flexible and scalable solution that grows with the data center. Mellanox VMS is future-proof, efficient and brings significant CAPEX and OPEX savings. The VMS is available today.

Atlanta's Big Data Kick Off Week Meets HPC Cray Exxact

HPC Job Bank


Featured Events






  • November 17, 2013 - November 22, 2013
    SC'13
    Denver, CO
    United States


HPCwire Events