ITR: Integrated Design of High-Performance Clustered Computing Systems and Algorithms for Large Scale Finite Element Simulation

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

For large-scale simulation problems, experience shows that, despite the rapid evolution of microprocessor and parallel computing technology, only a small fraction of peak performance from high-performance computing systems is generally realized. This is so because there are typically critical mismatches between the architecture of high-performance computing systems and the fundamental structure of the target simulations. This is clearly a problem of critical importance to information technology. It represents both an opportunity and a challenge to the disciplines of system-level design, targeting special-purpose architectures for high-performance computing, and algorithm and data structure design for large-scale engineering and software applications. Accordingly, this project will investigate systematic methodologies for designing the systems and algorithms for high performance applications. On the system design side, the project will focus on specialized billion-transistor chip multiprocessor architectures and a hierarchically distributed organization of resources tailored to the needs of the application. On the algorithm and application side, it will focus on finite element simulation applications, including representative problems from semiconductor device design and coupled flow and heat transfer processes.