Talk by William Tang, Princeton University @ETH Zurich

You are cordially invited to a talk by William Tang from Princeton University:

Scalable Scientific Software for Extreme Scale Applications with Fusion Energy Science as the Domain Application Example

Time: Monday, November 30th, 11:15am
Place: ETH Zurich, ML J 34.3

Abstract

A major challenge for supercomputing today is to demonstrate how advances in HPC technology translate to accelerated progress in key application domains – especially with respect to reduction in “time-to-solution” and also “energy to solution” of advanced codes that model complex physical systems. In order to effectively address the extreme concurrency present in modern supercomputing hardware, one of the most efficient algorithmic approaches has been to adopt OpenMP to facilitate efficient multi-threading approaches. This presentation describes the
deployment of scalable scientific software for extreme scale applications – with focus on Fusion Energy Science as an illustrative application domain. Computational advances in magnetic fusion energy research have produced particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of turbulent kinetic dynamics for which computer run-time and problem size scale very well with the number of processors on massively parallel many-core supercomputers. For example, the GTC-Princeton (GTC-P) code, which has been developed with a “co-design” focus, has demonstrated the effective usage of the full power of current leadership class computational platforms worldwide at the petascale and beyond to produce efficient nonlinear PIC simulations that have advanced progress in understanding
the complex nature of plasma turbulence and confinement in fusion systems. Results have provided great encouragement for being able to include increasingly realistic dynamics in extreme-scale computing campaigns with the goal of enabling predictive simulations characterized by unprecedented physics realism needed to help accelerate progress in delivering clean energy. In particular, OpenMP usage experiences and future challenges associated with achieving current advances will be described.

Biography

Prof. William Tang of Princeton University’s Department of Astrophysical Science serves on the Executive Board for the University’s interdisciplinary “Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (PICSciE)” which he helped establish as Associate Director (2003-2009). He is also a Principal Research Physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory [the DOE national laboratory for Fusion Energy Research for which he served as Chief Scientist (1997-2009)] and was recently appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s HPC Center and NVIDIA Center of Excellence. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has received the Chinese Institute of Engineers-USA Distinguished Achievement Award (2005) and the HPC Innovation Excellence Award from the International Data Corporation (2013). He is internationally recognized for expertise in the mathematical formalism as well as associated computational applications dealing with electromagnetic kinetic plasma behavior in complex geometries, and has an “h-index” or “impact factor” of more than 45 on the Web of Science, including well over 7000 citations. Prof. Tang has taught for over 30 years at Princeton U. and has supervised numerous Ph.D. students, including recipients of the Presidential Early Career
Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2000 and 2005.