A publication of the Advanced Simulation & Computing Division, NA-121.2, NNSA Defense Programs
June 2008
NA-ASC-500-08—Issue 7
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The New Frontier of Research: Science at the Petascale
In early June 2008, while verifying the performance of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Roadrunner supercomputer, Los Alamos and IBM researchers used three different computational codes to test the machine: VPIC, SPaSM, and PetaVision. VPIC simulates plasma physics. For example, one application of VPIC is to simulate laser plasma interactions critical to understanding inertial confinement fusion at the National Ignition Facility. SPaSM simulations provide insight into fundamental materials and physics processes. PetaVision models the human visual system—mimicking more than one billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses. Scientists used PetaVision to reach a new computing performance record of a sustained 1.144 petaFLOPS.
Roadrunner is an advanced architecture with a very exciting future in terms of science and social exploitation of new technologies. Applications will foster scientific discovery in many fields, ranging from physical sciences to biology and medicine.
See the June 13, 2008, LANL press release “Roadrunner supercomputer puts research at a new scale.”
A simulation of laser interaction with a carbon target using the VPIC code.
A movie of a shock front traveling through polycrystalline Fe causing a phase transformation from the bcc (gray) to hcp (red) and fcc (green) structure, as simulated by LANL’s large-scale molecular dynamics code SPaSM.
Click image to see Quicktime movie [9.4MB]
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