Monday, March 22
IP1
Meeting the ASCI Challenge: Terascale Scientific Simulation
8:30 AM-9:30 AM
Room: Texas Ballroom B
Chair: Michael T. Heath, University of Illinois, Urbana
Numerical
simulation plays an increasingly important role in many scientific
and engineering applications, including global climate modeling and
computational fluid dynamics. In the case of the nation's stockpile
stewardship program, it plays a central role, as evidenced by the
U.S. Department of Energy's Accelerated Strategic Computing
Initiative (ASCI). This ambitious program is opening the door to
terascale scientific simulation, and in so doing, redefining the
state of the art in supercomputing. ASCI already has fielded three
1TF machines and will deploy the world's first 100TF machine in 2004.
These massively parallel computers will have upwards of 100,000
processors and there are myriad mathematical and computer science
issues that must be addressed to ensure that these machines can be
employed effectively to explore complex physical phenomena.
The speaker will discuss the challenges facing ASCI, with emphasis on
scalability (of platforms, algorithms, and implementation). He will
discuss the need for scalable numerical algorithms, such as
multilevel methods for the solution of PDEs, and will present some
recent results in this area. He also will motivate the urgent need
for scalable data exploration methodologies, such as multiresolution
data analysis and pattern recognition techniques, that are needed to
help scientists glean insight from their petabytes of simulation
output. The need to develop the mathematical foundations for
simulation science also will be mentioned. The presentation will
include several recent "first of their kind" simulation
results drawn from the defense, environmental, and life sciences that
demonstrate the utility---and difficulties---of terascale scientific simulation.
Steven F. Ashby
Center for Applied Scientific Computing, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory
MMD, 1/29/99