INDUSTRY

After recently passing Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) acceptance tests in record time for a large supercomputer, the lab's new Cray X1E system, nicknamed Phoenix, is already delivering unprecedented performance on some of the nation's most daunting "grand challenge" science problems, Cray Inc. announced today. "We subjected the Cray X1E system to rigorous acceptance tests, and it passed with flying colors. We already have five grand challenge projects running on it and are seeing a lot of breakthrough science that has not been possible on other contemporary HPC systems," said Thomas Zacharia, ORNL's associate laboratory director for Computing and Computational Sciences. With peak performance of 18.5 teraflops (trillion calculations per second), ORNL's Cray X1E supercomputer is one of the most powerful high performance computing (HPC) systems in the world. Most HPC systems today achieve less than 10 percent of their peak performance on very challenging scientific problems. The Cray X1E system's high-bandwidth, low-latency Cray architecture enables it to sustain far higher percentages on these problems, making the Cray system even more powerful in practice. The five grand challenge problems already running in production mode at large scale on ORNL's Cray X1E supercomputer include: -- Combustion simulation. The Cray X1E supercomputer will make practical the first 3-D numerical simulations of an ignition flame fed by a fuel-air mix, with detailed chemistry. This will help manufacturers to design next-generation combustion devices. Simulation runs using the S3D software application can be completed in weeks, as opposed to months or years on other HPC systems. -- Precise calculations of molecular structures. Chemists are using the Cray X1E system and a new parallel-vector algorithm to perform precise (full-configuration interaction) calculations of molecular structures many imes larger than were possible with other computer systems. Understanding these structures is critically important for a wide range of pursuits, from studying contaminant dispersion in the environment to developing treatments for genetic diseases. -- Plasma energy research. The Cray X1E system runs the world's fastest, most-detailed simulations of waves used to control plasma, gaseous matter superheated enough to generate massive amounts of energy. The simulation is related to the multibillion-dollar ITER project, which aims to tame plasma so it can later become a virtually inexhaustible supply of 'clean' electricity. High-resolution simulations of the heated plasma take weeks, compared with years on other computer systems. -- Accelerator design. Researchers will use the Cray X1E supercomputer to help determine the optimal shape for the accelerator chamber inside the International Linear Collider (ILC). The ILC is the highest-priority future ccelerator project in high-energy physics and simulations are currently under way using the Omega3P code developed under the Department of Energy's SciDAC program. -- Supernova research. The core collapse of a supernova -- a massive star at the end of its life -- creates a shock wave known as a stationary accretion shock instability (SASI) that may cause the star to explode. The ray X1E system's computing power allows scientists to perform each 3-D SASI simulation in 1-2 days, compared with one month today, greatly speeding research. "We are excited that the Cray X1E system is already enabling research communities to make breakthrough advances on a range of grand challenge science problems," said Cray President and CEO Peter Ungaro. "We are committed to helping ORNL meet its aggressive goal to create the world's most powerful computing resource for open science."