Facing the Big Data Challenge in the Fusion Code XGC
Author/Presenter
Event Type
Workshop
TimeFriday, November 17th10:40am -
11:30am
Location302-303
DescriptionBoundary plasma of a magnetic fusion reactor is far
from a thermodynamic equilibrium, with the physics
dominated by nonlinear multiscale multiphysics
interactions in a complicated geometry, and requires
extreme-scale computing for first-principles based
understanding. The scalable particle-in-cell code XGC
has been developed for this purpose, in partnership with
the computer science and applied mathematics communities
over the last decade. XGC’s extreme-scale capability has
been recognized by being awarded several hundred million
hours of computing time on all US three leadership class
computers, and by being selected into all three
pre-exascale/exascale programs: CAAR, NESAP, and AURORA
ESP. The physics data size produced from a 1-day XGC run
of ITER plasma on the present ~20PF computer is ~100PB,
which is much above the limit imposed by the present
technology. We are thus losing most of the valuable
physics data in order to keep the data flow within the
limits imposed by the I/O rate and the file-system size.
Since the problem size will increase in proportion to
the parallel computer capability, the challenge will
grow at least 100-fold as the exascale computers arrive.
Reduction of the data size by several orders of
magnitude is required that can still preserve the
accuracy for enabling various levels of scientific
discoveries. On-the-fly, in-memory data analysis and
visualization must occur at the same time. These issues,
as well as the necessity to collaborate tightly with the
applied mathematics and computer science communities,
will be discussed from the application driver point of
view.
Author/Presenter
