Collaborative Research: Advanced Parallel Computing Techniques with Applications to Computational Cosmology

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

Parallel machines with over a hundred thousand processors are now being built. NSF's widely accessible TeraScale facilities have already deployed a 3,000 processor machine. Algorithmic advances have made it possible to solve problems at a much faster rate. However, complexity of these algorithms and parallelizing them remain a hindrance to advances in scientific computing. This project will develop an object based methodology to simplify development of highly efficient parallel applications. A run-time system will be developed to automatically distribute the user's object based application among various processors. This novel system observes the running program to apply dynamically an intelligent suite of strategies to effect optimization. Parallel components can be plugged in and out of running computations and exchange data with each other in a flexible manner. The development of this infrastructure will provide a framework to allow easy building of particle-oriented parallel programs to be used to model galaxies, dark matter, stars, planets, and gas particles in computational astrophysics. The new framework will allow simulations to operate efficiently with billions of particles and tens of thousands of processors. These simulations will be able to make direct contact with satellite and ground-based astronomical data to obtain cosmological parameters with high precision and to study how planets form.