A publication of the Advanced Simulation & Computing Division, NA-121.2, NNSA Defense Programs
September 2008
NA-ASC-500-08—Issue 8
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Roadrunner Phase 3 System Stabilization Proposals Selected
Proposals have been selected in a competitive process to help with the Roadrunner Phase 3 system stabilization efforts once the machine is accepted at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
To advance science and programming knowledge, LANL has selected open-science and weapons-science projects.
Eighteen connected units of the Roadrunner accelerated petascale system will be available for a select group of users for approximately four months early in 2009 for high-impact science and engineering simulations. This hybrid computing system has a peak performance of 1.026 petaFLOPS with over 80 terabytes of memory. Selected proposals include thermonuclear burn studies, molecular dynamics, turbulence, magnetic reconnection, petascale atomistic bioenergy, viral phylogenetics, parallel-replica dynamics, and supernova light-curves.
For an example of the science, see the attached movie of a supernova explosion of a 15-solar-mass Star simulation. The simulation was carried out with the LANL code SNSPH, a parallel three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics code.
Work on Roadrunner will extend these simulations by calculating light curves and spectra from full radiation-hydrodynamic models of these explosions. Comparisons with actual light curves and spectra from supernova observations—particularly from upcoming programs like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Joint Dark Energy Mission—will allow us to more accurately interpret observed phenomena and to further constrain the mechanism responsible for supernovae.
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