Game-Changing Time Integration of Complex Systems for the Exaflop Era

Exaflop 时代复杂系统的改变游戏规则的时间集成

• 批准号: 228090-2013
• 负责人: Spiteri, Raymond
• 金额: $ 2.19万
• 依托单位: University of Saskatchewan
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2015-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=570351
• 关键词: Game; Changing; Time; Integration; Complex

It is an exciting time to be a computational scientist. By 2018, some predict we will be in the exaflop era, in which supercomputers will be some 20 times more powerful than the human brain. The enormity of these figures is rivalled only by that of the emergent opportunities for applications of this computing power. Exascale computing would allow us to tackle grand challenge problems in virtual medicine, climate change, renewable energy, advanced materials, resource recovery, and national security. These problems offer a fundamental connection between extreme computing, industrial and economic growth, and societal imperatives. The broad objectives of this research are to develop effective numerical methods and software for the simulation of complex systems that are amenable to current trends in computing hardware, especially those that are envisaged to support exascale computing. The mathematical models for the systems we study are based on evolutionary differential equations. These systems typically have multiple interacting time scales, and accordingly no single time-integration method has the characteristics to handle them all in an effective manner. The specific approach we employ is based on intelligent, fine-scale partitioning strategies combined with the design of optimized time-integration methods. Our present focus is on applying this approach to simulate the electrical activity in the heart. We have proposed novel time-integration methods for such simulations and have already demonstrated performance improvements of up to factors of 300 over current state-of-the-art methods. In the longer term, we plan to tackle whole heart simulations, in which models of electrical activity are further augmented to take into account tissue elasticity and blood flow. The performance gains in heart simulation will bring us closer to simulations that are fast enough to benefit clinical training and practice as well as personalized medicine. This research aims to provide the computational breakthroughs that can ultimately lead to an improvement in the quality of life of millions of people in Canada and around the world who are affected by heart disease.

对于计算科学家来说，这是一个激动人心的时代。有人预测，到2018年，我们将进入百亿亿次运算时代，届时超级计算机的运算能力将是人脑的20倍左右。这些数字之巨大，只能与这种计算能力的应用所带来的新机遇相媲美。百亿亿次计算将使我们能够解决虚拟医疗、气候变化、可再生能源、先进材料、资源回收和国家安全等重大挑战问题。这些问题提供了极端计算、工业和经济增长以及社会需求之间的基本联系。