Collaborative Research:Framework:Software:NSCI:Enzo for the Exascale Era (Enzo-E)

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

The earliest stages of the formation of galaxies and quasars in the universe are soon to be explored with a powerful new generation of ground and space-based observatories. Broad and deep astronomical surveys of the early universe beginning in the next decade using the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope will revolutionize our understanding of the origin of galaxies and quasars, and help constrain the nature of the dark matter which is the dominant matter constituent in the universe. Detailed physical simulations that model the formation of these objects are an indispensible aid to understanding the coming glut of observational data, and to maximize the scientific return of these instruments. In this project, PIs at the Univ. California San Diego, Columbia Univ., Georgia Tech, and Michigan State Univ. are collaborating with the goal of developing a next generation community simulation software framework for the coming generation of supercomputers for cosmological simulations of the young universe. Undergraduate and graduate students will be directly involved in the software development as well as its application to several frontier cosmological research topics. The software framework that will be produced will be disseminated as open source software to enable a much broader range of scientific explorations of astrophysical topics. The project brings together the key developers of the open source Enzo adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) hydrodynamic cosmology code, who will port its software components to a newly developed AMR software framework called Cello. Cello implements the highly scalable array-of-octrees AMR algorithm on top of the powerful Charm++ parallel object system. Designed to be extensible and scalable to millions of processors, the new framework, called Enzo-E, will target exascale high performance computing (HPC) systems of the future. Through this project, the entire Enzo community will have a viable path to exascale simulations of unprecedented size and scope. The PIs have chosen three frontier problems in cosmology to drive the development of the Enzo-E framework: (1) the assembly of the first generation of stars and black holes into the first galaxies; (2) the role of cosmic rays in driving galactic outflows; and (3) the evolution of the intergalactic medium from cosmic dawn to the present day. Annual developer workshops and software releases will keep the broader research community informed and involved in the developments. This project is supported by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering and the Division of Astronomical Sciences in the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.