Editor’s and Readers’ Choice Awards recognize leaders in high-performance computing
(From L to R) Suzy Tichenor, director of ORNL’s industrial partnerships program; Tom Tabor, CEO of Tabor Communications; Jeff Nichols, ORNL’s associate laboratory director for computing and computational sciences, and Jack Wells, OLCF director of science. The center won three HPC wire awards for its collaborations with industry.
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) earned three HPCwire awards in high-performance computing (HPC) for collaborative industrial research projects conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
HPCwire, a leading publication for supercomputing news, recognized OLCF supercomputer users Ford Motor Company and GE Global Research with two Editor’s Choice Awards and one Readers’ Choice Award.
The companies gained access to the OLCF’s supercomputers through a program at ORNL called Accelerating Competitiveness through Computational Excellence, or ACCEL. This industrial partnership program aims to help companies boost competitiveness through easy access to the lab’s world-class computational resources and expertise.
“ACCEL is helping companies like Ford and GE tackle competitively important problems whose solutions will help reduce the cost and time-to-market for new products,” said Suzy Tichenor, director of industrial partnerships. “The three HPCwire awards are a testament to the success of this collaborative program.”
(From L to R) Rick Arthur, GE Global Research; Tom Tabor, CEO of Tabor Communications; Masako Yamada, GE Global Research; and Jeff Nichols, ORNL’s associate laboratory director for computing and computational sciences. The center won three HPC wire awards for its collaborations with industry.
The Editor’s Choice Award for the best use of HPC in manufacturing went to GE Global Research and the OLCF for research to better understand ice formation at the atomic level. Using OLCF’s Titan supercomputer, researchers for the first time simulated hundreds of millions of water molecules freezing in slow motion. New insights into how ice forms will help GE develop wind turbines that are better able to withstand debilitating ice accumulation in cold climates.
Ford Motor Company and the OLCF were recognized with an Editor’s Choice Award for the best use of HPC in automotive research and a Readers’ Choice Award for the best HPC collaboration between government and industry. The awards recognize research conducted on the OLCF’s Jaguar supercomputer, upgraded and renamed Titan in 2012, to optimize for the first time the underhood airflow in automobiles to reduce cooling and drag and increase fuel efficiency. Jaguar used technology from DataDirect Networks for computer-aided engineering and computational fluid dynamics simulations.
“It’s always an honor to publicly recognize the organizations and individuals whose hard work, dedication, and efforts over the past year have contributed to scientific discoveries and new breakthroughs in emerging technologies,” said Tom Tabor, CEO of Tabor Communications Inc., publisher of HPCwire. “The awards represent recognition by the high-performance computing community to its own for significant contributions to the advancement of science and technology.”—by Jennifer Brouner
