Benchmarking Mixed-Precision Performance

Technology

Benchmarking Mixed-Precision Performance

Today at ISC High Performance 2021, a European virtual conference for high-performance computing (HPC), the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) Summit was ranked as the world’s second-fastest supercomputer in the 57th TOP500 list. But it also took second place in a relatively new benchmark test apart from the main…

Coury TurczynJune 28, 2021

Events Industry

GE Spins up Supercomputer Models to Zero in on Energy Loss in Turbines

High-pressure turbines are complex pieces of engineering and vital components of gas turbines used to propel jet engines. The more efficient these jet engines are, the better the outcomes for the aircraft industry. The turbine blades rotate behind the combustion chamber in an engine, and they must endure the hot…

Rachel McDowellJune 11, 2021

Science

Physicists Crack the Code to Signature Superconductor Kink Using Supercomputing

Scientists have long been trying to understand the behavior of superconductors, materials that have zero electrical resistance when they reach sufficiently low temperatures. Superconductors might be useful for technologies such as magnets for MRIs, fusion devices, and particle accelerators. To understand superconductors, one concept is pivotal: phonons, which are quantum…

Rachel McDowellMay 19, 2021

Science

Scientists Tap Supercomputing to Study Exotic Matter in Stars

At the heart of some of the smallest and densest stars in the universe lies nuclear matter that might exist in never-before-observed exotic phases. Neutron stars, which form when the cores of massive stars collapse in a luminous supernova explosion, are thought to contain matter at energies greater than what…

Rachel McDowellMay 6, 2021

People

Virtual Workshop on HPCToolkit Profiler Gives Computational Codes a Boost

The HPCToolkit profiler helps the OLCF’s scientific users better understand their GPU-centric codes. More than 150 people participated in the HPCToolkit virtual workshop hosted by the OLCF and NERSC last month. Image Credit: ORNL When users of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) supercomputers want to improve their scientific codes,…

Rachel McDowellMay 6, 2021

Industry

ORNL Licenses Revolutionary AI System to General Motors for Automotive Use

The US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has licensed its award-winning artificial intelligence software system, the Multinode Evolutionary Neural Networks for Deep Learning, to General Motors for use in vehicle technology and design. The AI system, known as MENNDL, uses evolution to design optimal convolutional neural networks –…

Coury TurczynApril 27, 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 McDowellApril 22, 2021

People

Arthur “Buddy” Bland, World-Leading Supercomputing Project Director, Retires after 40 Years Dedicated to HPC

“No risk, no reward.” It’s a familiar sentiment in business and entrepreneurial ventures. Risk drives innovation and propels organizations to new heights. It’s certainly familiar to Arthur “Buddy” Bland, former project director at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) who retired this month after 40 years of faithful service…

Rachel McDowellFebruary 26, 2021

People

OLCF’s Buddy Bland Earns DOE Secretary of Energy Exceptional Service Award

In December, former Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette virtually presented ORNL's Buddy Bland the Secretary's Exceptional Service Award. Bland retired this month from his 36-year career at ORNL. Arthur “Buddy” Bland of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) was presented the Secretary’s Exceptional Service Award in December for 40…

Rachel McDowellFebruary 26, 2021

Science

Scientists Use Supercomputers to Study Reliable Fusion Reactor Design, Operation

Nuclear fusion, the same kind of energy that fuels stars, could one day power our world with abundant, safe, and carbon-free energy. Aided by supercomputers Summit at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Theta at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), a team of scientists…

Rachel McDowellFebruary 18, 2021

Science

Supercomputers Aid Scientists Studying the Smallest Particles in the Universe

Since the 1930s, scientists have been using particle accelerators to gain insights into the structure of matter and the laws of physics that govern our world. Today, these accelerators are some of the most powerful experimental tools available, propelling particles to nearly the speed of light and then colliding them…

Rachel McDowellJanuary 29, 2021

Science

A New Approach for Bigger and Better Earthquake Modeling

This story was originally written by Aaron Dubrow at the Texas Advanced Computer Center and adapted by Rachel McDowell for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdGctQsjKpU A randomly selected 3,000-year segment of the physics-based simulated catalog of earthquakes in California, created on the Texas Advanced Computing Center's Frontera supercomputer. Video Credit:…

Rachel McDowellJanuary 29, 2021

Events Technology

Rethinking GPU Hackathons for a Pandemic and Beyond

This is a joint story by OLCF writers Coury Turczyn and Rachel McDowell. When University of Michigan (UM) professor of aerospace engineering Venkat Raman and his team of graduate students were awarded a grant of compute time on the nation’s most powerful and smartest scientific supercomputer, the IBM AC922 Summit…

OLCF Staff WriterJanuary 12, 2021

Science

University of Delaware Team Tightens up Code for Exascale Computing on Frontier

This article was originally written by Tracey Bryant, Senior Director for Research Communications at the University of Delaware. University of Delaware professor Sunita Chandrasekaran is leading an international team designing an application for the Frontier exascale supercomputer, now being built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Image Credit: Sunita Chandrasekaran, University of Delaware…

Rachel McDowellJanuary 12, 2021

Science

Scientists Tap the Power of High-Performance Computing in a Bet to Understand Cancer Growth

A multi-institutional team of scientists is using Summit, America’s fastest supercomputer for open science, to get a better understanding of how certain proteins signal body cells to reproduce uncontrollably, triggering cancer. Summit is part of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of…

Andrea SchneibelDecember 22, 2020

Technology

Jupyter Has Landed at the OLCF

To analyze and process scientific data, researchers often employ Jupyter notebooks, interactive web documents that host snippets of code written in statistical programming languages such as Python (or R or Julia). Domain scientists, mathematicians, data scientists, and educators use the Jupyter tool suite to analyze and visualize data, iteratively prototype codes,…

Rachel McDowellDecember 22, 2020

Science

Simulations Reveal Nature’s Design for Error Correction During DNA Replication

DNA replication is one of the most important processes in biology, responsible for ensuring that a cell’s genetic material is copied over to new cells efficiently during cell division. But what happens when there is a mistake? Fortunately, replicative DNA polymerases—the cell’s replication molecular machines—are capable of proofreading the newly…

Rachel McDowellDecember 11, 2020

Science

Distinct ACM Gordon Bell Prizes Awarded to Two Teams Using the Summit Supercomputer

A team from the University of California Berkeley, Peking University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Princeton University won the 2020 ACM Gordon Bell Prize. Image Credit: SC20 Today at the 2020 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, or SC20, virtual conference, two deserving teams were awarded…

Rachel McDowellNovember 19, 2020

Science

Multi-Institutional Team Earns Gordon Bell Special Prize Finalist Nomination for Rapid COVID-19 Molecular Docking Simulations

One of the biggest challenges of drug discovery lies in the fact that scientists must search through an almost infinite space of chemical compounds to find one that might be capable of interfering with the infectious disease process. When the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 began sweeping the globe, scientists…

Rachel McDowellNovember 18, 2020

Science

Gordon Bell Special Prize Finalist Team Reveals AI Workflow for Molecular Systems in the Era of COVID-19

Since a team at the University of Texas at Austin and the National Institutes of Health first mapped the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—the main infection machinery of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease—scientists around the world have been eager to understand more about this structure and the others that make…

Rachel McDowellNovember 18, 2020

Summit