ExCALIBUR Working Group on turbulence at the exascale
The Harnessing Exascale Computing (ExCALIBUR) programme aims to redesign high priority simulation codes and algorithms to fully harness the power of supercomputers in the mid-2020s, keeping UK research and development at the forefront of high-performance simulation science. This will be achieved this by bringing together an unprecedented range of UK domain experts, mathematicians and computational scientists. Who will identify common issues and opportunities in the high priority simulation codes and focus their combined scientific expertise and resources to accelerate toward interdisciplinary solutions.
The UK Turbulence Consortium and the UK ExCALIBUR project on turbulence at the exascale have launched a podcast on “Turbulence at the exascale” to gather the views of the community about the opportunities and the challenges that will come with exascale computing for turbulent flows in the UK.
We hope you enjoy the podcast, and we welcome your ideas for future episodes!
YouTube playlist --> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8nwJjSiQiAhtVKlMWXle5t2n3RcC0__S
Soundcloud playlist --> https://soundcloud.com/sylvain-laizet/sets/turbulence_exascale
Guest |
Institution |
Video + audio |
Audio only |
David Ham |
Imperial College London (UK) |
||
Gihan Mudalige |
University of Warwick (UK) |
||
Nilanjan Chakraborty |
Newcastle University (UK) |
||
Neil Sandham |
University of Southampton (UK) |
||
Dirk Pleiter |
Jülich Supercomputing Centre (Germany) |
||
Filippo Spiga |
NVIDIA (UK) |
||
Neil Ashton |
Amazon Web Services (UK) |
||
Alistair Revell |
University of Manchester (UK) |
||
Spencer Sherwin & Chris Cantwell |
Imperial College London (UK) |
||
Simon McIntosh-Smith |
University of Bristol (UK) |
||
Michael Sprague & Shreyas Ananthan |
NREL (US) |
||
Cristin Merritt & Andrea Townsend-Nicholson |
Women in HPC |
||
Michèle Weiland |
EPCC at The University of Edinburgh (UK) |
||
Pablo Ouro |
University of Manchester (UK) |
||
Mark Bull |
EPCC at The University of Edinburgh (UK) |
BACKGROUND INFORMATION TO ExCALIBUR
ExCALIBUR is a Wave 2 SPF programme led by the Met Office and EPSRC along with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and research councils, including the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC).
To better understand the opportunities and the challenges in computational fluid dynamics that will come with exascale computing, EPSRC and UKRI are funded a Design and Development Working Group (DDWG) targeting turbulent flow simulations at the exascale, a high priority area of research for the UK. The focus is on wind energy and green aviation applications as exascale computing will be a game changer in these areas and will contribute to make the UK a greener nation (The UK commits to net zero carbon emissions by 2050). This DDWG is building upon the experience and expertise of the UKTC and the CCP Turbulence. Two of our flagship flow solvers, OpenSBLI and Incompact3d, are currently being re-designed for pre-exascale and exascale systems using the high-level abstraction framework OPS, an API with associated libraries and pre-processors to generate parallel executable for applications on multi-block structured meshes.
Radical changes to supercomputer architectures are on the horizon. The current simulation codes, that much of UK science relies on, are designed for current supercomputer architectures. These codes will, at best, not be able to fully exploit the power that the supercomputers of the mid-2020s will deliver; at worst, they will run slower on those machines than they do now. Future computers will be more energy efficient and so the longer we rely on the current approach, the more expensive the solution will be. Therefore, it is essential that we invest now in redesigning those simulation codes so that they perform well on the future generations of supercomputers.
ExCALIBUR will meet this challenge by delivering research and innovative algorithmic development to redesign the high priority simulation codes to fully harness the power of future supercomputers across scientific and engineering applications. It will achieve this by bringing together an unprecedented range of UK domain experts, mathematicians and computational scientists who will identify common issues and opportunities in the high priority simulation codes and focus their combined scientific expertise and resources to accelerate toward interdisciplinary solutions. The programme objectives have been designed to specifically address the benefits sought:
1. Efficiency - The UK’s most important scientific simulation codes will be able to harness the power of the supercomputers of the mid-2020s resulting in an increase in scientific productivity for a given investment.
2. Capability – Capitalising on this efficiency will enable the UK to continue to push the boundaries of science across a wide range of fields delivering transformational change in capability.
3. Expertise – A new, forward-facing, interdisciplinary approach to RSE career development will position the next generation of UK software engineers at the cutting-edge of scientific supercomputing.
ExCALIBUR is built around four pillars: separation of concerns; co-design; data science; and investing in people. These pillars describe the fundamental principles that guide the development of research within the ExCALIBUR programme and are designed to ensure that the outcomes are future-proofed against the constantly evolving landscape of hardware design. It will be delivered through six main activities: the redesign of a core set of simulation codes (use cases) chosen to span a wide range of science domains; knowledge integration across the programme through widely applicable cross-cutting themes; application of learning from these activities to a second wave of use cases; exploratory research to identify and develop emerging high-performance algorithms in areas with significant potential impact; an interdisciplinary Research Software Engineer knowledge integration activity; and an annual capital investment to support the development of novel test beds to enable co-development with industry.
The ExCALIBUR programme is funded until 31 March 2025.
ExCALIBUR is a Wave 2 SPF programme led by the Met Office and EPSRC along with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and research councils, including the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC).
To better understand the opportunities and the challenges in computational fluid dynamics that will come with exascale computing, EPSRC and UKRI are funded a Design and Development Working Group (DDWG) targeting turbulent flow simulations at the exascale, a high priority area of research for the UK. The focus is on wind energy and green aviation applications as exascale computing will be a game changer in these areas and will contribute to make the UK a greener nation (The UK commits to net zero carbon emissions by 2050). This DDWG is building upon the experience and expertise of the UKTC and the CCP Turbulence. Two of our flagship flow solvers, OpenSBLI and Incompact3d, are currently being re-designed for pre-exascale and exascale systems using the high-level abstraction framework OPS, an API with associated libraries and pre-processors to generate parallel executable for applications on multi-block structured meshes.
Radical changes to supercomputer architectures are on the horizon. The current simulation codes, that much of UK science relies on, are designed for current supercomputer architectures. These codes will, at best, not be able to fully exploit the power that the supercomputers of the mid-2020s will deliver; at worst, they will run slower on those machines than they do now. Future computers will be more energy efficient and so the longer we rely on the current approach, the more expensive the solution will be. Therefore, it is essential that we invest now in redesigning those simulation codes so that they perform well on the future generations of supercomputers.
ExCALIBUR will meet this challenge by delivering research and innovative algorithmic development to redesign the high priority simulation codes to fully harness the power of future supercomputers across scientific and engineering applications. It will achieve this by bringing together an unprecedented range of UK domain experts, mathematicians and computational scientists who will identify common issues and opportunities in the high priority simulation codes and focus their combined scientific expertise and resources to accelerate toward interdisciplinary solutions. The programme objectives have been designed to specifically address the benefits sought:
1. Efficiency - The UK’s most important scientific simulation codes will be able to harness the power of the supercomputers of the mid-2020s resulting in an increase in scientific productivity for a given investment.
2. Capability – Capitalising on this efficiency will enable the UK to continue to push the boundaries of science across a wide range of fields delivering transformational change in capability.
3. Expertise – A new, forward-facing, interdisciplinary approach to RSE career development will position the next generation of UK software engineers at the cutting-edge of scientific supercomputing.
ExCALIBUR is built around four pillars: separation of concerns; co-design; data science; and investing in people. These pillars describe the fundamental principles that guide the development of research within the ExCALIBUR programme and are designed to ensure that the outcomes are future-proofed against the constantly evolving landscape of hardware design. It will be delivered through six main activities: the redesign of a core set of simulation codes (use cases) chosen to span a wide range of science domains; knowledge integration across the programme through widely applicable cross-cutting themes; application of learning from these activities to a second wave of use cases; exploratory research to identify and develop emerging high-performance algorithms in areas with significant potential impact; an interdisciplinary Research Software Engineer knowledge integration activity; and an annual capital investment to support the development of novel test beds to enable co-development with industry.
The ExCALIBUR programme is funded until 31 March 2025.