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OLCF science articles.

An image depicting a shock wave propagating through diamondScience

Team Earns Gordon Bell Prize Finalist Nomination for Simulating Carbon at Extreme Pressures and Temperatures

Are diamonds even stronger than we’ve ever imagined? Can other post-diamond phases appear when diamond is subjected to extreme pressures? A team used machine-learned descriptions of interatomic interactions on the 200-petaflop Summit supercomputer at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to model more than a…
Rachel McDowell
November 17, 2021
Science

Unraveling the “Big Boom”

Simulations performed on Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit supercomputer provide a more detailed look at how stars die and could help unlock new insights into the origins of Earth’s heavy elements. The study, conducted by scientists at ORNL and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, modeled the collapse and explosion of…
Matt Lakin
November 11, 2021
exascale obstaclesScienceTechnology

Exascale Computing’s Four Biggest Challenges and How They Were Overcome

In 2008, the Exascale Study Group (ESG) issued a report, Technology Challenges in Achieving Exascale Systems, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It concluded that exascale supercomputers faced four major obstacles—power consumption, data movement, fault tolerance, and extreme parallelism—“where current technology trends are simply insufficient, and significant new…
Coury Turczyn
October 18, 2021
Frontier: the Direction of DiscoveryScience

Exascale Day 2021

On October 18, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is celebrating the third National Exascale Day. The holiday was created in 2019 as an initiative of DOE’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) and Cray, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, to honor scientists and researchers who will make…
Katie Bethea
October 18, 2021
Science

Reaching Remarkable States of Matter with Laser Simulations

With the help of supercomputers, scientists are getting a better idea of how to study some of the strongest electromagnetic fields in the universe. Scientists aim to use high-power lasers to blast different materials and study the interplay between light and matter. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the study of how…
Rachel McDowell
September 10, 2021
Science

Shape-Based Model Sheds Light on Simplified Protein Binding

Can something as simple as shape fully determine whether or not proteins will bind together? Scientists are commissioning supercomputers to find out. A team led by Sharon Glotzer, distinguished professor and department chair of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan (UM), used the 200-petaflop Summit supercomputer at the US…
Rachel McDowell
August 9, 2021
Science

Titan Study Takes Jet Turbine Design to New Heights

Simulations performed on Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Titan supercomputer could clear the runway for more efficient jet-engine turbines and help set a new benchmark for turbine design. The study by an international team of scientists modeled air flow over a 3D turbine blade using the computational power of Titan,…
Matt Lakin
July 22, 2021
ALCC program banner with 4 bubbles showing images of medical records, clouds, the Spallation Neutron Source target, and wind farmsScience

ALCC Program Announces 2021–2022 OLCF Research Grants

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) is tasked with leading the world in supercomputing, high-end computational science, and advanced networking for science. One of its most important tools in advancing computational science is the annual ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC). The competitive program…
Coury Turczyn
July 2, 2021
ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin and Rama Vasudevan (foreground) use scanning probe microscopy to study bulk ferroelectricity and surface electrochemistry -- and generate a lot of data. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of EnergyScience

ORNL’s Superb Materials Expertise, Data and AI Tools Propel Progress

At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists use artificial intelligence, or AI, to accelerate the discovery and development of materials for energy and information technologies. “AI gives scientists the ability to extract insights from an ever-expanding volume of data,” said David Womble, ORNL’s AI program director. “New AI…
Dawn Levy
May 5, 2021
Science

Computer Simulations Shed Light on Nanomaterial Structures

2D nanomaterials, with a thickness of a single layer of atoms, have unique electrical and optical properties that make them good candidates for use in electronics and optical sensors. An increasing range of these ultrathin materials can now be synthesized, and the ways in which they emit and absorb light…
Rachel McDowell
April 22, 2021
Science

U.S. Department of Energy’s INCITE Program Seeks Proposals for 2022

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE, program is seeking proposals for high-impact, computationally intensive research campaigns in a broad array of science, engineering and computer science domains. The deadline is June 18, 2021. INCITE’s open call provides an opportunity for…
Coury Turczyn
April 12, 2021
FRIB buildingScience

The Magic is Gone for Certain Atomic Nuclei

Using the power of the Summit supercomputer, researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have verified the results of a groundbreaking experiment to precisely measure the charge radii of neutron-rich potassium isotopes. The findings challenge current nuclear theory…
Coury Turczyn
April 6, 2021
ATOMScience

Oak Ridge National Laboratory joins ATOM Consortium to Accelerate Drug Discovery

The Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine, or ATOM, consortium today announced the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge, Argonne and Brookhaven national laboratories are joining the consortium to further develop ATOM’s artificial intelligence, or AI-driven, drug discovery platform. The public-private ATOM consortium aims to transform drug discovery from a…
Katie Bethea
March 31, 2021