P26: Optimizing Gravity and Nuclear Physics in FLASH for
Exascale
SessionPoster Reception
Event Type
ACM Student Research Competition
Poster
Reception
TimeTuesday, November 14th5:15pm -
7pm
LocationFour Seasons Ballroom
DescriptionIn a Type Ia supernova, runaway fusion ignites in a
white dwarf, causing it to explode. The heavy element
yields of these events remain uncertain, and
high-performance multiphysics simulations with tools
like FLASH are critical for our understanding. Current
simulations track approximately a dozen nuclear
isotopes, as opposed to the thousands required to
completely capture the event's nuclear physics.
Simulating nuclear physics and self-gravity accurately and efficiently is critical for modeling a Type Ia supernova, since supernovae are competitions between energy-releasing nuclear reactions and gravity. Currently, the FLASH nuclear reaction network and self-gravity solver requires substantial inter-node communication. We use non-blocking MPI collectives to overlap communication in the self-gravity calculation with the computation-heavy nuclear burning calculation. We find that speedups from this technique are possible, but are MPI implementation-dependent. We highlight some of the challenges associated with this type of optimization.
Simulating nuclear physics and self-gravity accurately and efficiently is critical for modeling a Type Ia supernova, since supernovae are competitions between energy-releasing nuclear reactions and gravity. Currently, the FLASH nuclear reaction network and self-gravity solver requires substantial inter-node communication. We use non-blocking MPI collectives to overlap communication in the self-gravity calculation with the computation-heavy nuclear burning calculation. We find that speedups from this technique are possible, but are MPI implementation-dependent. We highlight some of the challenges associated with this type of optimization.
