Performing simulations at the terascale today and at the sustained petascale "tomorrow"

COMP 182

Jeffrey A Nichols, nicholsja@ornl.gov, Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Bethel Valley Rd, Oak Ridge, TN 37831
Leading edge science, including computational chemistry, materials science, biology and nanoscale science at the sustained terascale is discussed in light of the resources available at the NSF Teragrid and DOE Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Current applications are characterized with regard to system hardware, system software and algorithms employed. Performance on today's most advanced systems will be presented. Future HPC systems several orders of magnitude in peak performance beyond today's production systems will be discussed. Application performance achieving sustained petaflops is projected for these HPC systems and potential benefit to science is highlighted.