EM Photonics, University of Delaware Team Up to Develop Advanced Algorithms for Air Force

EM Photonics and the Computer Science Department at the University of Delaware have been selected by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to develop innovative algorithms for scientific computing, modeling and simulation for a multi-GPU environment. Numerous Air Force applications will benefit from this research effort, including electromagnetic modeling, computational fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, and radiation transport, to name a few.

The EM Photonics' GPU Computing Team Lead John Humphrey, who developed the GPU-accelerated math library CULAtools, will be working closely with Dr. Michela Taufer's group, the Global Computing Laboratory at the University of Delaware. The new team has tremendous experience in the massive parallelization of computationally-intense algorithms on GPUs and can rely on the deployment of the university's largest supercomputer, code-named "Geronimo," which is based on a custom GPGPU design utilizing NVIDIA Tesla and Fermi GPU computing technology.

"This is a valuable opportunity for EM Photonics. We have successfully collaborated in the past with Dr. Taufer's group and their familiarity with our CULA library adds great value to this project. We look forward to extending our work in dense matrix solvers on multiple GPUs, as well as researching the feasibility of multi-GPU sparse solvers. With access to a set of GPU libraries that can address the computational needs of so many applications, Air Force engineers can stay focused on their specific projects without having to write software code for advanced GPU architectures," said John Humphrey, head of the GPU computing team at EM Photonics.

"There is a tremendous need today for skilled engineers and computer scientists in this research area. Collaborating with a vibrant and successful company such as EM Photonics opens new opportunities for our students at UD to embrace research in concurrent programming and multicore architectures. This project provides us the unique opportunity to train our students for future challenges in high performance computing by combining academic and industrial experience," said Dr. Taufer.

The AFOSR invests in long-term, broad-based research into aerospace-related science and engineering. For more information about their research areas, programs, and accomplishments, visit http://www.wpafb.af.mil/afrl/afosr.