Collaborative Research: Towards Petascale Cosmological Simulations

合作研究：迈向千万亿次宇宙学模拟

• 批准号: 0904482
• 负责人: Andrey Kravtsov
• 金额: $ 47.55万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-15 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0904482&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Towards; Petascale; Cosmological

OCI-0904482/OCI-0904484/OCI-0904670Kravtsov/Rudd/LanThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This award supports a research program to develop petascale numerical simulations of structure formation in the universe. This work will utilize the Adaptive Refinement Tree (ART) cosmological simulation code. Specific goals are: (1) to achieve petascale level performance for the ART cosmological code by improving load balancing, communication performance, and the hybrid parallelization mode on multi-core/multi-processor nodes on petascale platforms; (2) to develop a robust fault-tolerance mechanism for petascale ART simulations; (3) to provide a user-level interface and documentation for public release of ART under an open source license; and (4) to produce state-of-the-art cosmological simulations that will result in a rich scientific output and a valuable repository of simulation results for the astrophysical community. The project combines the expertise of a computer scientist with extensive experience in research on load balancing, scalability, and fault tolerance, with a group of numerical cosmologists with significant experience in code development and running state-of-the-art cosmological simulations. The petascale cosmological simulations resulting from this work will lead to major breakthroughs in our understanding of galaxy formation and will provide critical theoretical support for forthcoming large observational surveys designed to probe the matter and energy content of our universe and constrain properties of the mysterious dark matter and dark energy.This project will bridge the cross-disciplinary boundaries between Computer Science and Astrophysics by developing a tightly-knit team collaborating on a single project. By involving graduate students of different levels and a postdoctoral scholar, this project will serve as an excellent vehicle for professional training of young computational scientists and numerical astrophysicists in cutting edge simulation techniques. The ultimate result of this project - a publicly available, open source petascale cosmological simulation code - will be of great value for the general astrophysics community, and will be widely used, as shown by the widespread usage of other, currently existing, publicly available cosmological codes. The code can also be used as a calibration tool for current and pending dark energy experiments. On a broader scale, this project will have a direct impact on undergraduate education and the general public. Visualizations of cosmological simulations of the kind proposed here trigger a curiosity and a sense of discovery in the general public afforded only by the exploration of the universe. To this end, in collaboration with the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, three-dimensional visualizations of the simulations will be developed for full-dome planetaria shows and public lectures and be made available on the web.

OCI-0904482/OCI-0904484/OCI-0904670Kravtsov/Rudd/LanThis奖是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法第111-5条)资助的。该奖项支持一项研究计划，该计划旨在开发宇宙结构形成的千万亿级数值模拟。这项工作将利用自适应精化树(ART)宇宙学模拟代码。具体目标是：(1)通过改进负载平衡、通信性能和Petascale平台上多核/多处理器节点上的混合并行化模式，实现最先进的宇宙学代码的千万亿级性能；(2)为Petascale ART模拟开发一个健壮的容错机制；(3)为在开源许可下公开发布ART提供用户级的界面和文档；以及(4)产生最先进的宇宙学模拟，这将导致丰富的科学输出和天体物理界宝贵的模拟结果储存库。该项目结合了一位在负载平衡、可伸缩性和容错方面拥有丰富研究经验的计算机科学家的专业知识，以及一群在代码开发和运行最先进的宇宙模拟方面具有丰富经验的数值宇宙学家。这项工作产生的千万亿级宇宙模拟将在我们对星系形成的理解上取得重大突破，并将为即将到来的大型观测调查提供关键的理论支持，这些调查旨在探索我们宇宙的物质和能量含量，并限制神秘暗物质和暗能量的性质。该项目将通过建立一个紧密合作的单一项目团队，在计算机科学和天体物理学之间架起跨学科的桥梁。通过让不同水平的研究生和一名博士后学者参与，该项目将成为年轻计算科学家和数值天体物理学家在尖端模拟技术方面进行专业培训的优秀工具。这个项目的最终结果--一个公开可用的、开放源码的千万亿级宇宙模拟代码--将对普通天体物理界具有重要价值，并将得到广泛使用，正如其他目前存在的、公开可用的宇宙代码的广泛使用所表明的那样。该代码还可以用作当前和即将进行的暗能量实验的校准工具。在更广泛的范围内，这一项目将对本科教育和普通民众产生直接影响。这里提出的那种宇宙学模拟的可视化在普通公众中引发了好奇心和发现感，这是只有探索宇宙才能提供的。为此，将与芝加哥阿德勒天文馆合作，为全穹顶天文展览和公开讲座开发模拟的三维可视化，并在网上提供。