Advanced Simulation and Computing Program

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Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
Company type Public
Founded1995
Headquarters

The Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC) is a super-computing program run by the National Nuclear Security Administration, in order to simulate, test, and maintain the United States nuclear stockpile. [1] The program was created in 1995 in order to support the Stockpile Stewardship Program (or SSP). The goal of the initiative is to extend the lifetime of the current aging stockpile.

Contents

History

After the United States' 1992 moratorium on live nuclear testing, the Stockpile Stewardship Program was created in order to find a way to test, and maintain the nuclear stockpile. In response, the National Nuclear Security Administration began to simulate the nuclear warheads using supercomputers. As the stockpile ages, the simulations have become more complex, and the maintenance of the stockpile requires more computing power. Over the years, due to Moore's Law, the ASC program has created several different supercomputers with increasing power, in order to compute the simulations and mathematics. [ citation needed ]

In celebration of 25 years of ASC accomplishments, the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program has published this report. [2]

Research

The majority of ASC's research is done on supercomputers in three different laboratories. The calculations are verified by human calculations.[ citation needed ]

Laboratories

The ASC program has three laboratories: [3]

Computing

Current supercomputers

The ASC program currently houses numerous supercomputers on the TOP500 list for computing power. This list changes every six months, so please visit https://top500.org/lists/top500/ for the latest list of NNSA machines. Although these computers may be in separate laboratories, remote computing has been established between the three main laboratories. [4]

Previous supercomputers

One of Advanced Simulation and Computer (ASC) Program's former supercomputers, ASC Purple ASC Purple Supercomputer.jpg
One of Advanced Simulation and Computer (ASC) Program's former supercomputers, ASC Purple

Newsletter

The ASC program publishes a quarterly newsletter describing many of its research accomplishments and hardware milestones.

Elements

Within the ASC program, there are six subdivisions, each having their own role in the extension of the life of the stockpile.[ citation needed ]

Facility Operations and User Support

The Facility Operations and User Support subdivision is responsible for the physical computers and facilities and the computing network within ASC. They are responsible for making sure the tri-lab network, computing storage space, power usage, and the customer computing resources are all in line. [8]

Computational Systems and Software Environment

The Computational and User Support subdivision is responsible for maintaining and creating the supercomputer software according to NNSA's standards. They also deal with the data, networking and software tools. [9]

The ASCI Path Forward project substantially funded the initial development of the Lustre parallel file system from 2001 to 2004. [10] [11]

Verification and Validation

The Verification and Validation subdivision is responsible for mathematically verifying the simulations and outcomes. They also help software engineers write more precise codes in order to decrease the margin of error when the computations are run. [12]

Physics and Engineering Models

The Physics and Engineering Models subdivision is responsible for deciphering the mathematical and physical analysis of nuclear weapons. They integrate physics models into the codes in order to gain a more accurate simulation. They deal with the way that the nuclear weapon will act under certain conditions based on physics. They also study nuclear properties, vibrations, high explosives, advanced hydrodynamics, material strength and damage, thermal and fluid response, and radiation and electrical responses. [13]

Integrated Codes

The Integrated Codes subdivision is responsible for the mathematical codes that are produced by the supercomputers. They use these mathematical codes, and present them in a way that is understandable to humans. These codes are then used by the National Nuclear Society Administration, the Stockpile Steward Program, Life Extension Program, and Significant Finding Investigation, in order to decide the next steps that need to be taken in order to secure and lengthen the life of the nuclear stockpile. [14]

Advanced Technology Development and Mitigation

The Advanced Technology Development and Mitigation subdivision is responsible for researching developments in high performance computing. Once information is found on the next generation of high performance computing, they decide what software and hardware needs to be adapted in order to prepare for the next generation of computers. [15]

Related Research Articles

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administered privately by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM Blue Gene</span> Series of supercomputers by IBM

Blue Gene was an IBM project aimed at designing supercomputers that can reach operating speeds in the petaFLOPS (PFLOPS) range, with low power consumption.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASCI White</span> Former supercomputer in the United States

ASCI White was a supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which was briefly the fastest supercomputer in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandia National Laboratories</span> National laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it has a second principal facility next to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, and a test facility in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii. Sandia is owned by the U.S. federal government but privately managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stockpile stewardship</span>

Stockpile stewardship refers to the United States program of reliability testing and maintenance of its nuclear weapons without the use of nuclear testing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASCI Red</span> Supercomputer

ASCI Red was the first computer built under the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), the supercomputing initiative of the United States government created to help the maintenance of the United States nuclear arsenal after the 1992 moratorium on nuclear testing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASCI Blue Mountain</span>

ASCI Blue Mountain is a supercomputer installed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was designed to run simulations for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing program. The computer was a collaboration between Silicon Graphics Corporation and Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was installed in 1998.

Red Storm was a supercomputer architecture designed for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Advanced Simulation and Computing Program. Cray, Inc developed it in 2004 based on the contracted architectural specifications provided by Sandia National Laboratories. The architecture was later commercially produced as the Cray XT3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TOP500</span> Database project devoted to the ranking of computers

The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputing Conference in June, and the second is presented at the ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference in November. The project aims to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases rankings on HPL benchmarks, a portable implementation of the high-performance LINPACK benchmark written in Fortran for distributed-memory computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sequoia (supercomputer)</span> IBM supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

IBM Sequoia was a petascale Blue Gene/Q supercomputer constructed by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration as part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC). It was delivered to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2011 and was fully deployed in June 2012. Sequoia was dismantled in 2020, its last position on the top500.org list was #22 in the November 2019 list.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is a United States federal agency responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the United States Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASC Purple</span>

ASC Purple was a supercomputer installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. The computer was a collaboration between IBM Corporation and Lawrence Livermore Lab. Announced November 19, 2002, it was installed in July 2005 and decommissioned on November 10, 2010. The contract for this computer along with the Blue Gene/L supercomputer was worth US $290 million. As of November 2009, the computer ranked 66th on the TOP500 supercomputer list.

Cielo was a United States supercomputer located at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Built by Cray Inc, the computer was part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program to maintain the United States nuclear stockpile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor H. Reis</span>

Victor Herbert Reis is a technologist and former U.S. government official, best known as the architect and original sponsor of the U.S. nuclear Stockpile Stewardship Program and its associated Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), which resulted in the creation of several new generations of government-sponsored supercomputers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Titan (supercomputer)</span> American supercomputer

Titan or OLCF-3 was a supercomputer built by Cray at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for use in a variety of science projects. Titan was an upgrade of Jaguar, a previous supercomputer at Oak Ridge, that uses graphics processing units (GPUs) in addition to conventional central processing units (CPUs). Titan was the first such hybrid to perform over 10 petaFLOPS. The upgrade began in October 2011, commenced stability testing in October 2012 and it became available to researchers in early 2013. The initial cost of the upgrade was US$60 million, funded primarily by the United States Department of Energy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appro</span> American technology company

Appro was a developer of supercomputing supporting High Performance Computing (HPC) markets focused on medium- to large-scale deployments. Appro was based in Milpitas, California with a computing center in Houston, Texas, and a manufacturing and support subsidiary in South Korea and Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trinity (supercomputer)</span>

Trinity is a United States supercomputer built by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC). The aim of the ASC program is to simulate, test, and maintain the United States nuclear stockpile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Njema Frazier</span> American nuclear physicist

Njema Frazier is a nuclear physicist at the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Washington, D.C.

The Tri-Lab Operating System Stack (TOSS) is a Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that was created to provide a software stack for high performance computing (HPC) clusters for laboratories within the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The operating system allows multiple smaller systems to emulate a high-performance computing (HPC) platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Gschwind</span> American computer scientist

Michael Karl Gschwind is an American computer scientist who currently is a director and principal engineer at Meta Platforms in Menlo Park, California. He is recognized for his seminal contributions to the design and exploitation of general-purpose programmable accelerators, as an early advocate of sustainability in computer design and as a prolific inventor.

References

  1. "Advanced Simulation and Computing and Institutional R&D Programs | National Nuclear Security Administration". NNSA. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
  2. "ASC Headquarters Publications". asc.llnl.gov. Retrieved 2022-09-06.
  3. "Sandia National Laboratories: Advanced Simulation and Computing". www.sandia.gov. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
  4. "Remote Computing Enablement" (PDF).
  5. Los Alamos National Laboratories (2002). "The ASCI Q System: 30 TeraOPS Capability at Los Alamos National Laboratory" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-01-12. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
  6. High performance scientific and engineering computing: hardware/software support by Laurence Tianruo Yang 2003 ISBN   1-4020-7580-4 page 144
  7. "TOP500 Rankings". Archived from the original on 2013-09-21. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  8. "Facility Operations and User Support | National Nuclear Security Administration". NNSA. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
  9. "Computational Systems & Software Environment | National Nuclear Security Administration". NNSA. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
  10. Gary Grider (2004-05-01). "The ASCI/DOD Scalable I/O History and Strategy" (PDF). University of Minnesota. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-12. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  11. R. Kent Koeninger (2003-06-01). "The Ultra-Scalable HPTC Lustre Filesystem" (PDF). Linux Cluster Institute. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  12. "Verification & Validation | National Nuclear Security Administration". NNSA. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
  13. "Physics and Engineering Models | National Nuclear Security Administration". NNSA. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
  14. "Integrated Codes | National Nuclear Security Administration". NNSA. Retrieved 2016-01-31.
  15. "Advanced Technology Development and Mitigation | National Nuclear Security Administration". NNSA. Retrieved 2016-01-31.