MATH Seminar

Title: Mini-Apps for Modern Architectures
Seminar: Scientific Computing
Speaker: Benjamin Bergen of Los Alamos National Laboratory
Contact: James Nagy, nagy@compute.mathcs.emory.edu
Date: 2011-02-02 at 12:50PM
Venue: W306
Download Flyer
Abstract: A mini-app is a simulation code that captures the fundamental complexity of some aspect of a full-scale solver. For classified applications, this is advantageous because the mini-app may be shared with vendors or academics, while the original code may not. In this presentation, we describe such a mini-app that is designed to capture the cardinal aspects of an Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) framework for multi-physics problems in astrophysics and weapons science. The approach introduced here can be classified as block-structured AMR with the addition of a novel data decomposition technique that helps address many of the issues that arise when considering the challenges of exascale computing, e.g., fault tolerance, data migration--for load balancing--and adaptability to accelerated architectures. The work discussed in this presentation will be in the context of a multi-physics solver for radiation hydrodynamics simulations to help us better understand Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiments underway at the National Ignition Facility (ICF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.