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Rachel McDowell

Rachel McDowell is a science writer for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.

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OLCF Hosts CUDA Workshop for GPU Programming

A recent OLCF-hosted workshop, “Introduction to CUDA C/C++,” gave 40 students, interns, and researchers at ORNL a taste of lower-level programming on a GPU architecture. The 18,688 NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators in Titan, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) flagship supercomputer, can greatly boost code performance. Researchers interested in…
Rachel McDowell
August 9, 2017
Science

3-D Models Help Scientists Gauge Flood Impact

Heavy rainfall can cause rivers and drainage systems to overflow or dams to break, leading to flood events that bring damage to property and road systems as well potential loss of human life. One such event in 2008 cost $10 billion in damages for the entire state of Iowa. After…
Rachel McDowell
July 18, 2017
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OLCF Staff Reach Students through Coding Events

Daughters of ORNL staff members display their fractals on the visualization wall in the Exploratory Visualization Environment for Research in Science and Technology, or EVEREST. Pictured here are the girls with staff volunteers (front row, left to right) Ashley Nguyen, Dasha Herrmannova, Megan Bradley, Katherine Engstrom, Kate Carter, Anne Berres,…
Rachel McDowell
July 18, 2017
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Annual User Meeting Spotlights Titan, Summit, and Deep Learning

One hundred twenty-three Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) users and staff members attended the annual OLCF User Meeting in May to share achievements on Titan, discuss the next big Summit supercomputer, and delve into deep learning concepts. The event, held May 23–25 at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak…
Rachel McDowell
June 27, 2017
Science

Putting the Pedal to the Metal in the Hunt for Alloys

High-temperature alloys, often used in power plants and automobile engines, are valued in engineering because they can withstand temperatures that are a high fraction of their melting point. Operating power plants and engines at higher temperatures typically allows for more efficient energy generation, so developing higher temperature alloys is desirable.…
Rachel McDowell
June 26, 2017
Technology

OLCF Explores Deep Learning with DGX-1

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) recently deployed a new NVIDIA DGX‑1 artificial intelligence supercomputer era offer scientists and researchers opportunities to delve into deep learning technologies with more vigor than ever before. Deep learning uses neural networks to classify data or predict outcomes by training models on large data…
Rachel McDowell
June 5, 2017
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OLCF Brings Petascale Computing to 2017 APS March Meeting

National Center for Computational Sciences Director of Science Jack Wells co-organized a focus session called “Computational Physics at the Petascale and Beyond” at the APS March Meeting 2017 to bring high-performance computing topics to the largest gathering of physicists in the world. For staff at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing…
Rachel McDowell
May 9, 2017
Technology

Containers Provide Access to Deep Learning Frameworks

Adam Simpson (front) and Matt Belhorn (back), high-performance computing user support specialists at the OLCF, use the Singularity application to develop containers that will allow newer systems to run deep learning packages. Deep learning is emerging as a powerful branch of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to help…
Rachel McDowell
May 9, 2017
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OLCF Conference Calls Equip Users with System Knowledge

OLCF staff members led an Introduction to VisIt conference call, which taught users about the open source visualization and animation tool VisIt. Pictured here are (left, front to back) Dave Pugmire, Sherry Ray, and Bill Renaud with (right, front to back) Chris Fuson, Suzanne Parete-Koon, and Ashley Barker. Need support?…
Rachel McDowell
April 18, 2017
Technology

Test System Arms OLCF with Experimental Technology

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is now equipped with ARM1, a new test bed for the ARM architecture and its power-efficient processors. As an early development system, ARM1 gives researchers the opportunity to test various software packages and explore an experimental environment for ARM architecture–based systems. Because ARM…
Rachel McDowell
April 18, 2017
Technology

Ascending to Summit: Announcing Summitdev

Since having partnered with IBM, NVIDIA, and Mellanox in 2014, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been forging the path to its next big supercomputer, Summit, which will feature an IBM POWER9 architecture and NVIDIA Volta GPUs. Scheduled to enter full production in 2019, Summit will allow researchers to dive…
Rachel McDowell
February 28, 2017
Science

Modeling Autoignited Combustion to Drive Engines Forward

It’s no surprise that Rudolph Diesel became a millionaire only 6 short years after he patented the first diesel engine in 1892. When used in cars and trucks, diesel engines can deliver better fuel economy than gasoline engines and can last hundreds of thousands of miles longer. The efficiency of…
Rachel McDowell
February 28, 2017
Technology

ORNL–Oracle Collaboration Offers Data Safeguard

ORNL recently partnered with Oracle to test some of the database technology company’s new firmware. Pictured here: Quinn Mitchell, high-performance computing storage system administrator at the OLCF, with the OLCF’s tape libraries. Image Credit: Rachel McDowell, ORNL The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently partnered with Oracle to test some…
Rachel McDowell
January 4, 2017
Technology

CAAR Team Members Test Compilers for Summit at IBM Hackathon

Former OLCF Postdoctoral Researcher and current NVIDIA Solutions Architect Tom Papatheodore (left) and OLCF Tools Developer Oscar Hernandez (right) attended an IBM hackathon for OpenMP 4.5 with Lixiang Luo (center), an IBM research staff member at the IBM/NVIDIA Center of Excellence at ORNL, to test compilers for Summit, the OLCF’s…
Rachel McDowell
December 7, 2016
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ORNL Staffers Create a Buzz at Grace Hopper Conference

Women from all over the world united at the 22nd annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (GHC), presented by the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology and the Association for Computing Machinery. This year 14 women from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) attended the conference to…
Rachel McDowell
December 7, 2016
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OLCF Staff Members Lead HPC Sessions at 2016 Tapia Conference

This fall, OLCF Staff members attended the 2016 Association for Computing Machinery’s Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference. Pictured here are (left to right) Verónica Vergara Larrea, Bradley Szallar, Professor Richard A. Tapia, Kate Carter, and Adam Simpson. Last month staff members from the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing…
Rachel McDowell
November 29, 2016
People

OLCF User Support Specialist Receives YWCA Award Nomination

Each fall the YWCA in Knoxville, Tennessee, holds its annual Tribute to Women gala to recognize women in the community who have demonstrated the values of the organization: encouraging diversity, advocating for racial justice, and empowering women. This year Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) User Support Specialist Suzanne Parete-Koon was chosen as a…
Rachel McDowell
October 18, 2016
People

OLCF’s Anantharaj Shares HPC Knowledge at Summer School

A total of 45 students participated in the 2016 International Summer School on Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ISSAOS), titled “Advanced Programming Techniques for the Earth System Science.” Six continents were represented both in person and remotely, as all the summer school materials—lectures, workshop examples, and tutorial information—were also offered online…
Rachel McDowell
October 18, 2016
Science

Unraveling the Science Behind Biomass Breakdown

Lignocellulosic biomass—plant matter such as cornstalks, straw, and woody plants—is a sustainable source for production of bio-based fuels and chemicals. However, the deconstruction of biomass is one of the most complex processes in bioenergy technologies. Although researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) had already uncovered information…
Rachel McDowell
October 18, 2016