Collaborative Research: Understanding the Dynamics of the Earth: High resolution mantle convection simulation on petascale computers

NSF PetaApps 0749334/0748898/0749045：了解地球的动力学：在Petascale计算机上进行高分辨率地幔对流模拟乔治·比罗斯(宾夕法尼亚大学)，奥马尔·加塔斯(德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校)，迈克尔·古尔尼斯(加州理工大学)，钟士杰(CU-Boulder)地幔对流是地球热和地质演化的主要控制因素。它对我们理解构造变形的起源和演化、地幔的热状态和成分状态的演化，以及最终地球作为一个整体的演化是至关重要的。尽管它对我们理解固体地球的动力学很重要，但由于涉及的时间和长度尺度很大，在真实瑞利数下对全球地幔对流的模拟目前是困难的，因为涉及的时间和长度尺度很广。该项目将利用即将到来的Petascale计算系统进行第一次高分辨率地幔对流模拟，该模拟可以解决热边界层和断层板块边界问题，这将使第一次能够纳入历史板块运动的逆解成为可能。这些模拟将在理解固体地球的动力学方面取得突破。然而，为了有效地利用即将到来的千万亿级系统，需要新的可伸缩算法和实现。为了能够进行这些模拟，该项目将：(1)调整、改进并行开源地幔对流程序CitcomS的性能，并将其扩展到千万亿级；(2)开发、实施、巩固和采用新的并行算法，用于自适应网格优化和逆解，可以扩展到数十万个处理器核心；以及(3)通过地球动力学计算基础设施(CIG)向地球科学界发布产生的地幔对流代码，CIG是一个为几个地球科学界开发和维护软件的NSF中心。

NSF PetaApps 0749334/0748898/0749045: Understanding the Dynamics of the Earth: High-Resolution Mantle Convection Simulation on Petascale Computers George Biros (Penn), Omar Ghattas (UT-Austin), Michael Gurnis (CalTech), Shijie Zhong (CU-Boulder) Mantle convection is the principal control on the thermal and geological evolution of the Earth. It is central to our understanding of the origin and evolution of tectonic deformation, the evolution of the thermal and compositional states of the mantle, and ultimately the evolution of the Earth as a whole. Despite its central importance to our understanding of the dynamics of the solid Earth, simulation of global mantle convection at realistic Rayleigh numbers down to the scale of faulted plate boundaries is currently intractable, due to the wide range of time and length scales involved. This project will capitalize on upcoming petascale computing systems to carry out the first high resolution mantle convection simulations that can resolve thermal boundary layers and faulted plate boundaries, which will enable the first inverse solutions that can incorporate historical plate motions. These simulations will lead to breakthroughs in understanding the dynamics of the solid Earth. However, to make effective use of the upcoming petascale systems, new scalable algorithms and implementations are needed. To enable these simulations, this project will: (1) tune, improve the performance of, and scale up to the petascale the parallel open-source mantle convection code CitcomS; (2) develop, implement, robustify, and incorporate new parallel algorithms for adaptive mesh refinement and inverse solution that can scale to hundreds of thousands of processor cores; and (3) release the resulting mantle convection codes to the geosciences community via the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG), an NSF center that develops and maintains software for several earth science communities.