Pilot Lab Exascale Earth System Modelling 'Oumuamua – Outer
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Pilot Lab Exascale Earth System Modelling is that while ʻOumuamua appears to accelerate along its trajectory – which is typical of comets – the astronomers JSC is leading a new Helmholtz incubator project that were unable to detect the gas emissions that are usually aims to lay the foundation for new breakthroughs in earth associated with this acceleration. The authors assume system modelling (ESM) on future exascale computer that the physical processes observed here are universal, architectures. There is increased societal demand for very but that they have simply not yet seen anything like high-resolution simulations of our environment as well as ʻOumuamua in our solar system. However, this study a better integration of the information value chain, from showed that ʻOumuamua is of completely natural origin. observations to coupled simulations and impact assess- ments. Recent technology trends, which lead to more It is estimated that billions of trillions of objects like heterogeneous HPC architectures and rapidly growing ‘Oumuamua are present in any cubic parsec (about 35 data volumes, require fundamentally new programming cubic light years) of the Milky Way. Susanne Pfalzner and paradigms and call for a coherent strategy for creating Michele Bannister (Queens University Belfast, UK) next-generation earth system models based on close showed in a second study (DOI 10.3847/2041- collaboration between domain scientists and computer 8213/ab0fa0) that the number of ‘Oumuamuas incorpo- experts. The new project is entitled Pilot Lab Exascale rated into a protoplanetary disk and participating in planet Earth System Modelling (PL-ExaESM) and contains five formation might be relatively high. One possible work packages, each partnering scientists from different consequence of the abundance of these objects is that research fields and Helmholtz centres. Within these they might occasionally jump-start planet formation. packages, PL-ExaESM will explore new concepts to Although much more work needs to be done, including overcome scalability limits, increase flexibility in ESM many simulations, one thing is clear: the importance of workflows, overcome bandwidth limitations, optimize interstellar objects in the planet formation process can no exascale HPC design, and improve ESM components longer be ignored. through AI methods. The project will be led by PD Dr. Martin Schultz from the Earth System Data Exploration Contact: Prof. Susanne Pfalzner, [email protected] research group and managed by Dr. Catrin Meyer from the SimLab Climate Science. It will run from October 2019 HAICU Local at FZJ: JSC and INM-1 Coop- until September 2021 and will become a Joint Lab erating on Machine and Deep Learning ExaESM in the coming Helmholtz PoF IV period. With the Helmholtz Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Unit Contact: Dr. Martin Schultz, [email protected] (HAICU), the Helmholtz Association aims to build a future- oriented network for basic and applied artificial ‘Oumuamua – Outer Space’s Short Visit to intelligence (AI) research. As an interdisciplinary AI Our Solar System platform, HAICU will integrate the Helmholtz Association's outstanding science portfolio, excellent infrastructures, In 2017, ‘Oumuamua became the first recorded object unique data sets, and extensive methodological from interstellar space to pass through our solar system. competence in order to position the Helmholtz Association It immediately triggered considerable speculation due to at the forefront of AI research. HAICU’s central unit is its extraordinary characteristics: was it more like an located at Helmholtz Zentrum München. Other Helmholtz asteroid or a comet? Some scientists even suggested it centres have been selected as hosts for the five local was a spaceship. In a study recently published in Nature HAICU units, so that together the units represent all six Astronomy (DOI 10.1038/s41550-019-0816-x), an interna- research fields of the Helmholtz Association. tional team of scientists from Europe and the USA, including Susanne Pfalzner from JSC, analysed the To ensure mutual exchange and close alignment between collected data on ʻOumuamua. What is particularly baffling research, development, and support activities in the field Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Tel: +49 2461 61-6402 in der Helmholtz Gemeinschaft Jülich Supercomputing Centre [email protected] No. 267 September 2019 52425 Jülich www.fz-juelich.de/jsc of machine/deep learning (ML/DL), two dedicated teams scientific disciplines to spend eight weeks studying at a will be deployed at JSC in the framework of HAICU Local PRACE partner organization. In addition to allowing at Forschungszentrum Jülich: the research-focused students to work on research projects in a multidisciplinary Cross-Sectional Team Deep Learning (CST-DL) and the and international environment, the aim of the SoHPC newly established High-Level Support Team (HLST), programme is to promote and disseminate scientific focused on development and support. HLST will employ culture among the upcoming generation of researchers, five researchers with experience in ML/DL research and making sure that students participating in the project will software development. Jenia Jitsev and Morris Riedel will be the computational scientists of tomorrow. Furthermore, jointly lead the JSC section of HAICU Local, defining through the participants’ sharing of their experiences in research topics and aligning support activities for long- blog posts and video presentations, the programme aims term ML/DL research strategy at JSC. The research focus to ensure that the students themselves become ambassa- of CST-DL will be on enabling large-scale, continual, dors for supercomputing at their respective institutions. open-end learning on modular supercomputers, which includes integrated simulation-learning closed-loop This year, Andreas Nikolaidis (Cyprus) and Noé Brucy systems with physics-informed constraints, methods for (France) joined JSC for the summer to gain first-hand transferable, multi-task unsupervised and reinforcement experience in day-to-day research. After a training week learning, and distributed neural architecture search. CST- for all 25 students in Italy hosted by CINECA, Andreas and DL will work closely with HLST to make results and tools Noé started work on their summer projects at JSC. Noé arising from research available to the broader scientific was supervised by Laura Morgenstern and worked on an community and the general public. HLST will focus on optimized tasking framework for fast multipole methods on development and research support in the fields of software GPUs, while Andreas’ project on lattice quantum chromo- engineering, data set creation and maintenance, and dynamics was supervised by Stefan Krieg. providing transparent open source implementations and documentation of outcomes from ML/DL related research. Contact: Dr. Ivo Kabadshow, [email protected] The Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) will also contribute to HAICU Local with a research group, thus JSC Collaborator Prof. Dietrich Stauffer Has continuing its long tradition of close cooperation with JSC. Passed Away Contact: Dr. Jenia Jitsev, [email protected], Prof. Morris Riedel, [email protected] It is with deep regret and sadness that JSC announces that its long-time friend and collaborator Dietrich Stauffer, Emeritus Professor at the University of Cologne, passed Memorandum of Understanding with away on 6 August 2019. Prof. Stauffer was one of the most Transmission System Operator TenneT respected German researchers in statistical physics, shaping the evolving field of computational science and JSC and the main two sites of the transmission system making seminal contributions to our understanding of operator TenneT – TenneT TSO GmbH in Bayreuth, critical phenomena. He later worked in the interdisciplinary Germany, and TenneT TSO B. V. in Arnhem, Netherlands field of econo- and sociophysics. – have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to discuss and examine future projects in the context of Dietrich Stauffer was the first head of the Many Particle electric power transmission systems for renewable energy Physics research group at the “Höchstleistungsrechen- production. The aim of this cooperation is the extension zentrum” (supercomputing centre) founded at For- and optimization of current HPC strategies with regard to schungszentrum Jülich in 1987, where he used supercom- modular workflows, scheduling strategies, data handling puters to set several world records in Ising model simula- capabilities, and the introduction of new, highly scalable tions. He was also actively involved in the conception of algorithms and solvers for optimization problems. In the international IUPAP Conference on Computational addition, the cooperation plans to discuss new services Physics, which was organized by JSC’s predecessor such as the introduction of big data and machine learning institute and took place in Aachen in 2001. Those of you algorithms for energy market analysis and power grid interested in Dietrich’s work might like to take a look here: design, as well as to aid in decision-making. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Stauffer. This MoU builds on the fruitful HPC enabling process The colleagues at JSC will remember him with great between JSC and TenneT which was finalized at the fondness. beginning of this year by experts in the Cross-Sectional Team Application Optimization at JSC. This allows re- Events sponsibility for the newly co-designed