SC14 brings together the most respected minds in high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis to debut the research and innovation that will open the door to new scientific and economic opportunities.
IDC officials announced winners Nov. 18 in New Orleans at the SC14 supercomputing conference
Two Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) partners received HPC Innovation Excellence awards from the International Data Corporation (IDC) for their research using OLCF computing resources. OLCF is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
IDC officials announced winners on Tuesday in New Orleans at the SC14 supercomputing conference. The award recognizes outstanding achievements with supercomputing resources and was created to highlight successful collaborations between science and industry, help disseminate the benefits of high-performance computing (HPC) resources, create a database of return-on-investment and innovation-based success stories from the HPC community, and demonstrate the value of HPC to policy makers and the public.
Teams from Colorado-based Tech-X Corporation and North Carolina State University used OLCF resources for groundbreaking research that ultimately led to the awards.
Researchers from Tech-X were honored for their work simulating interactions between plasma and electromagnetic waves in a fusion reactor. Fusion has high prospects as a clean and virtually inexhaustible source of energy, and scientists from all over the world are developing an understanding of the principles underlying sustainable laboratory fusion reactions. The complicated physics associated with plasma heating has led fusion researchers to use computation to supplement understanding of current experiments. Tech-X research scientist Tom Jenkins explained that only the most powerful computational resources are able to realistically model the complex antennas used for heating.
“The use of a leadership-class computational platform was essential for our high-resolution computations modeling the antenna operation, and Titan filled this need very well,” Jenkins said. “We got good help from the OLCF user support staff in addressing input/output and storage requirements and also had good success using the Rhea cluster to meet our visualization needs. OLCF deserves credit for maintaining, and helping users to navigate, the high-performance computational resources needed for scientific computing at this scale.”
For more information about the Tech-X project, visit https://txcorp.com/.
A team led by North Carolina State University professor and researcher Igor Bolotnov won an award for its simulations of “bubbly turbulence” in nuclear power plants. The most common nuclear reactors—light water reactors—create power by using nuclear fuel rods to heat water. The water turns to steam, which passes through turbines to create power. However, understanding the interaction between the fuel rod and water as it changes from a liquid to a gas is important for both power plant efficiency and safety.
“High fidelity simulation of bubbly turbulent flows became possible with modern leadership-class computing facilities,” Bolotnov said. “Our research group had the privilege to use OLCF supercomputing resources through an INCITE award, which enabled us to perform important simulations to study bubbly flow turbulence. OLCF support staff was instrumental in making this project a success, and we are looking forward to future computing projects in collaboration with ORNL.”
For more information on the Bolotnov team’s research, visit https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2014/06/02/going-nuclear/. —by Eric Gedenk
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
