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Mixed Precision: A Strategy for New Science Opportunities

OLCF computational scientist Wayne Joubert successfully exploited the Summit supercomputer’s low-precision capabilities to accelerate a genomics application to exascale speeds. Since the days of vector supercomputers, computational scientists have relied on high-precision arithmetic to accurately solve a wide range of problems, from modeling nuclear reactors to predicting supernova physics to…
Jonathan Hines
October 9, 2018
People

Faces of Summit: Getting Acclimated

Ashleigh Barnes simulates metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) using the LSDalton chemistry code. Pictured left, a visualization of a magnesium-based MOF made up of magnesium ions (green) and organic linkers consisting of carbon (tan), oxygen (orange), and hydrogen (white) atoms. A carbon dioxide molecule (floating tan and orange molecule) has been adsorbed…
Rachel McDowell
September 17, 2018
Summit supercomputerScience

Uncharted Territory

Ambitious supercomputers attract ambitious users. After debuting as the world’s fastest supercomputer in June, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) 200-petaflop Summit is already demonstrating its utility for solving complex computational challenges with unprecedented speed. A recent announcement by the Association for Computing Machinery lists five Summit users among…
Jonathan Hines
September 17, 2018
By forcing airflow to veer off the trailer towards the wake behind it, the TopKit Aero System (red) reduces the base wake (blue) and increases the pressure on the truck rear, creating a significant reduction in overall vehicle drag. Image Credit: SmartTruckScience

SmartTruck Steps Up Simulations for Certification by Computation

Long-haul tractor trailers, often referred to as “18-wheelers,” transport everything from household goods to supermarket foodstuffs across the United States every year. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, these trucks moved more than 10 billion tons of goods—70.6 percent of the nation’s total freight shipments—in 2016. But this transport doesn’t…
Rachel McDowell
August 29, 2018
George OstrouchovPeople

Preaching pbdR

Since bursting onto the scene in the early ’90s, high-performance computing (HPC) has become the most productive method for exploring ambitious problems in science that require substantial computational power. Yet in 2018, researchers in the statistical sciences—fields ranging from biology to economics to sociology—have yet to fully embrace the power…
Jonathan Hines
August 29, 2018
People

DOE Graduate Fellows Train on Titan for a Future in HPC

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) recently provided introductory training in high-performance computing (HPC) and access to the facility’s Titan supercomputer to some of the nation’s top doctoral students in computational science. As a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, the OLCF and supercomputing centers…
Katie Elyce Jones
August 29, 2018
Science

ALCC Program Awards 14 Projects a Combined 729.5 Million Core Hours at the OLCF

Every year, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) provides scientists with time on world-class computational resources across the country through the ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC). The ALCC program grants 1-year awards to energy-related research efforts with an emphasis on high-risk, high-reward simulations…
Elizabeth Rosenthal
August 7, 2018
People

OLCF Workshop Introduces HPC Concepts

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) held an Introduction to High-Performance Computing (HPC) workshop June 26–28 at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Using resources at the OLCF, a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at ORNL, researchers can tackle big science problems…
Elizabeth Rosenthal
July 17, 2018
People

OLCF Readies Users for Summit

Now that the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) has launched its IBM AC922 Summit supercomputer, staff members in the OLCF’s User Assistance and Outreach (UAO) Group are planning robust training events intended to enhance user experiences on the new system. Unlike the OLCF’s current Cray XK7 Titan supercomputer, which…
Rachel McDowell
June 26, 2018
Technology

Summit by the Numbers

Download the high-resolution file. The US Department of Energy’s Summit supercomputer located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory enables scientists to simulate complex physical systems and make predictions critical to advancing research and development. Summit’s “smart” architecture merges GPU acceleration and dense local memory to support expanding applications in data science…
Katie Elyce Jones
June 8, 2018
People

Faces of Summit: Succeeding by Leading

OLCF program director and project director for Summit, Buddy Bland has spent countless hours communicating and problem-solving with the system’s various stakeholders, including ORNL, DOE, and technology vendors IBM and NVIDIA, among others. On any given day at ORNL, Bland can be found participating in a project review, fielding updates…
Jonathan Hines
June 8, 2018
particle physics, nuclear physics, supercomputingScience

With Supercomputing Power and an Unconventional Strategy, Scientists Solve a Next-Generation Physics Problem

Using the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a team of researchers has calculated a fundamental property of protons and neutrons, known as the nucleon axial coupling, with groundbreaking precision. Led by André Walker-Loud of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the…
Katie Elyce Jones
May 30, 2018
Matt Ezell works with the HPC systems team and other OLCF groups to identify bugs and technical issues with Summit’s software before the machine comes online.People

Faces of Summit: Leading a Systems Expedition

Matt Ezell works with the HPC systems team and other OLCF groups to identify bugs and technical issues with Summit’s software before the machine comes online. The Faces of Summit series shares stories of the people behind America’s top supercomputer for open science, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit.…
Rachel McDowell
May 29, 2018
OLCF’s Chris Fuson is working with Summit vendors and OLCF team members to ready Summit’s batch scheduler and job launcher.People

Faces of Summit: Preparing to Launch

The Faces of Summit series shares stories of the people behind America’s top supercomputer for open science, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit. The IBM AC922 machine launched in June 2018. At the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), supercomputing staff and users are already talking about what kinds…
Katie Elyce Jones
May 1, 2018
Sarp Oral enjoys challenges of designing a large-scale file systemPeople

Faces of Summit: Tackling Storage

Sarp Oral, the storage team lead for the TechInt group at the OLCF, works with other storage team members to deliver a file system that meets the requirements for reliability, capacity, and performance. The Faces of Summit series shares stories of the people behind America’s top supercomputer for open science,…
Rachel McDowell
May 1, 2018
People

Faces of Summit: Building a Better Summit

The Faces of Summit series shares stories of the people behind America’s top supercomputer for open science, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit. The IBM AC922 machine launched in June 2018. When the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) newest supercomputer, Summit, comes on line in 2018 at the…
Katie Elyce Jones
February 27, 2018
Science

GM Revs up Diesel Combustion Modeling on Titan Supercomputer

https://vimeo.com/260126956 Most car owners in the United States do not think twice about passing over the diesel pump at the gas station. Instead, diesel fuel mostly powers our shipping trucks, boats, buses, and generators—and that is because diesel engines are about 10 percent more fuel-efficient than gasoline, saving companies money…
Katie Elyce Jones
February 7, 2018
Technology

New Discoveries Within ‘SIGHT’

SIGHT visualization from a project led by University of Virginia’s Leonid Zhigilei to explore how lasers transform metal surface. At the home of America’s most powerful supercomputer, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), researchers often simulate millions or billions of dynamic atoms to study complex problems in science and…
Katie Elyce Jones
February 7, 2018