HPC-GA

High Performance Computing for Geophysics Applications

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Simulating large-scale geophysics phenomenon represents, more than ever, a major concern for our society. Recent seismic activity worldwide has shown how crucial it is to enhance our understanding of the impact of earthquakes. Numerical modelling of seismic 3D waves obviously requires highly specific research efforts in geophysics and applied mathematics, leveraging a mix of various schemes such as spectral elements, high-order finite differences or finite elements.

But designing and porting geophysics applications on top of nowadays supercomputers also requires a strong expertise in parallel programming and the use of appropriate runtime systems able to efficiently deal with heterogeneous architectures featuring many-core nodes typically equipped with GPU accelerators.

The HPC-GA project aims at evaluating the functionalities provided by current runtime systems in order to point out their limitations. It also aims at designing new methods and mechanisms for an efficient scheduling of processes/threads and a clever data distribution on such platforms.

The HPC-GA project is unique in gathering an international, pluridisciplinary consortium of leading European and South American researchers featuring complementary expertise to face the challenge of designing high performance geophysics simulations for parallel architectures: UFRGS, INRIA, BCAM and UNAM. Results of this project will be validated using data collected from real sensor networks. Results will be widely disseminated through high-quality publications, workshops and summer-schools.'

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Large-scale geophysical events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are difficult to predict or simulate. However, understanding these physical processes is critical and enhances the ability to prepare for disasters. In particular, high-resolution imaging of Earth's subsurface, combined with predictions of ground motion provide information essential to mitigate damage from earthquakes.

The computational infrastructure largely exists within European facilities, but needs to be leveraged, tuned and devoted to geophysics and seismology. The 'High performance computing for geophysics applications' (HPC-GA) project is addressing the need to gather complementary expertise from computational sciences and applied mathematics.

HPC-GA gathered a multi-disciplinary consortium of European and South-American researchers to work on developing cutting edge geophysical modelling tools.

Solid Earth science has become a system science with several coupled sub-systems operating at different scales. Modelling the coupling of sub-systems is essential, but is limited by the computational power required to handle the increasing amount of data. On the other hand, codes need to be interfaced to simulate processes over the required time and space scales.

Accurate simulations of earthquakes must span an enormous range of space scales, from metres near the earthquake source to hundreds of kilometres. They also need to be balanced realistically to obtain maximum data for the requisite temporal scales that range from hundredths of a second to the hundreds of seconds..This is necessary to identify the frequencies that have greatest impact on buildings in earthquake-prone areas.

Advances in both computational technology and numerical methods are expected to carry forward models of geodynamics and seismic wave propagation at unprecedented resolution. On completion at the end of 2014, the HPC-GA project expects that validation using actual sensor data will facilitate implementation of geophysical simulations.

Reliable information will help scientists understand the basic science of earthquakes so engineers can better prepare for these events.