Gravitational Wave Physics Simulations on the AFRL CONDOR Supercomputer

该奖项支持一项研究计划，以了解和解决与扩展特定引力波物理应用相关的挑战，从16台索尼PlayStation 3 （PS3）游戏机的原型集群到目前可用的最大系统，该系统由位于纽约罗马的空军研究实验室（AFRL）建造。这个名为AFRL CONDOR的系统使用了1716台ps3以及传统服务器和Nvidia CUDA gpu来实现500 TFLOPS的计算能力。通过最近与AFRL建立的CRADA协议，PI可以无限制地访问这个大型系统。引力波物理的具体应用之一，将在这项工作的目标是一个模型的过程中捕获一个小（如太阳质量）黑洞的超大质量黑洞，理论引力波物理领域的一个重要问题，并引力波的潜在来源的空间探测器。目前有相当大的兴趣利用视频游戏技术的力量进行科学的高性能计算。PI的原型集群成功地用于科学计算，与传统的基于cpu的集群相比，在每美元性能和每瓦特性能等指标上取得了数量级的进步。该项目应用的成功扩展将立即影响这些应用所支持的引力波科学。此外，在像AFRL CONDOR这样的大型系统上实现良好扩展所获得的经验教训将非常有价值，并且可能适用于其他问题和系统。通过该项目开发的并行性或优化方法也可以在其他问题和领域中找到适用性。研究结果将发表在研究期刊和会议上，并通过PI的研究网站公开发布。此外，这是一个对物理和工程专业的学生都很有吸引力的项目。支持的研究生将学习超级计算的各个方面，包括如何处理和解决与在AFRL CONDOR等大型超级计算机上扩展相关的挑战。

This award supports a research program to understand and to address the challenges associated to scaling specific gravitational wave physics applications from a prototype cluster of 16 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) gaming consoles to the largest system now available, that built by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, NY. This system, named AFRL CONDOR, makes use of 1,716 PS3s alongside traditional servers and Nvidia CUDA GPUs to achieve 500 TFLOPS of computing power. The PI has unrestricted access to this large system through a recently established CRADA agreement with AFRL. One of the specific gravitational wave physics applications that will be targeted in this work is one that models the process of the capture of a small (say, solar-mass) black hole by a supermassive black hole, an important problem in the area of theoretical gravitational wave physics, and a potential source of gravitational waves for space-based detectors.There is considerable current interest in harnessing the power of video gaming technology for scientific high-performance computing. The PI's prototype cluster was used successfully for scientific computation and demonstrated order-of-magnitude gains in metrics such as performance-per-dollar and performance-per-Watt as compared with traditional CPU-based clusters. Successful scaling up of the applications used for this project will immediately impact the gravitational wave science that these applications enable. In addition, the lessons learned and the experience gained associated to achieving good scaling on a large system like AFRL CONDOR will be extremely valuable and likely applicable to other problems and systems. Parallelism or optimization approaches that may be developed through this project may also find applicability in other problems and areas. The outcomes and results will be published in research journals and conferences and also made openly available though the PI's research website. In addition, this is a project that would be very attractive to both physics and engineering students. The supported graduate student will learn about various aspects of supercomputing, including how to approach and address challenges related to scaling on large supercomputers like AFRL CONDOR.