CU Aerospace Uses iForge Supercomputer to Improve Lasers, Manufacturing

October 4, 2016

Oct. 4 — The physics of the world around us are often too complex to fully model in a virtual environment. The complexity can bottleneck improvements in manufacturing, scientific research and development, and high-power lasers used for defeating ballistic missiles.

A relatively new software package called BLAZE Multiphysics from CU Aerospace is making what used to be too complex—simulating a range of laser physics within a flowing plasma, for example—a fully modeled reality for researchers. This was done by combining a number of new, reconfigurable physical models within BLAZE. The most innovative of these new models were recently validated using the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ (NCSA) industry supercomputer iForge—an on demand resource for private companies performing large-scale simulations.

The new models can be applied in a wide range of scenarios but have been uniquely useful in modeling gas lasers. They were described in a paper published in mid-September by Director of Modeling and Simulation for CU Aerospace Andrew Palla. The multiphysics modeling capabilities in BLAZE have been 20 years in the making, and the software has been on the market for the past two years—with notable customers in the Department of Defense and industry.

Laser pointers are a type of “solid-state lasers,” meaning the beam is generated and amplified in a solid material. Gas lasers, on the other hand, rely on a gas, and as a result, typically produce a beam which can more effectively deliver high power over long distances.

“CU Aerospace engineers have cut through steel plating with a kilowatt-class gas laser at a distance of several feet over several seconds. The real question is, can you develop a far more powerful laser to do this to a ballistic missile almost instantly at 10 miles, 100 miles, 1,000 miles,” Palla said.

“To develop high-power lasers that operate over long distances, we need to represent the multiple layers of physics in one single virtual space. BLAZE can do that now,” Palla said.

Models researchers create independently to study lasers often leave out important physics due to the challenges associated with representing them numerically. For example, electric discharge physics are often left assumed constant, or “frozen,” in gas laser models; in reality, they’re far from constant. And since these discharge physics influence other processes crucial to the formation of the actual beam, researchers end up with incomplete models.

“Unless you have all of these different physical processes and unless you are correctly representing the rates at which they’re all occurring, you’re not going to get the right answer,” Palla said. “Our software can handle all of these different physics—fluid-dynamics, optical-physics, discharge physics, etc.—in one coupled simulation, and that’s particularly innovative.”

Not Just Lasers

BLAZE is versatile and isn’t just used for simulating laser physics. Researchers can develop their own models and combine them with existing ones provided with the BLAZE simulation engine to virtually prototype innovative solutions to manufacturing, and engineering research and development challenges.

Philippe Geubelle, head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an NCSA Faculty Fellow, is working with CU Aerospace to analyze and design a new kind of heat exchanger made of a microvascular fiber-reinforced composite material.

“These microvascular composites are made using sacrificial fibers. You place these fibers in the preform, and go through the traditional manufacturing process. Then, you raise the temperature a little bit, and the sacrificial fibers get vaporized and you get these very nice channels,” Geubelle said, adding that the manufacturing method has strong potential for self-healing and actively-cooled composite materials.

For the heat exchanger, the different processes at play range from temperature to flow rates for the fluids down to the shape of the channels—with almost unending possibilities for changing each. Using BLAZE and iForge, Guebelle and his team hope to narrow down the choices to a design that results in the most efficient heat exchanger.

“This from a simulation perspective is not an easy thing to do because it’s a multiphysics problem, Geubelle said. “It combines fluid flow and thermal modeling, which are two different physics worlds. BLAZE’s code is excellent for solving this multi-physics problem.”


Source: Austin Keating, NCSA

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire