NATIONAL ENERGY RESEARCH SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2006 NATIONAL ENERGY RESEARCH SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2006 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720-8148 This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. LBNL-63342, August 2007 Table of Contents THE YEAR IN PERSPECTIVE . 1 RESEARCH NEWS . 3 A warmer, stormier world : : By the end of this century, bigger hurricanes, longer heat waves, and more extreme weather will be evident . 4 Going to the extremes. 6 Breeding bigger hurricanes. 7 Improving hurricane defenses . 8 Under the computational microscope : : Materials scientists and chemists are using computational tools to understand, improve, and create new kinds of materials . 10 Graphene nanoribbons: A new path to spintronics. 12 Practical plasmonic crystal biosensors . 13 Overcoming nanocrystals’ resistance to doping. 15 Why doping strengthens grain boundaries . 16 A random walk along an interface. 18 Building a chemical tool box . 20 Solving plasma puzzles : : Numerical simulations are revealing the origins of strange phenomena that occur in the most complex state of matter . 22 Understanding magnetic explosions . 24 Modeling microturbulence in fusion plasmas . 26 Surfing the plasma waves : : Simulations are helping physicists understand how to optimize the beams in laser wakefield particle accelerators . 28 The birth and death of stars : : For understanding the history of the Universe, supercomputers are now as necessary as telescopes. 32 High-mass star formation . 34 A star is born . 35 From soundwaves to supernovae . 36 Calibrating cosmology . 39 Nobel Prize for Physics leads list of honors for NERSC users in 2006 . 42 THE NERSC CENTER . 44 Horst Simon steps down as NERSC Director . 45 Science-Driven Systems : : Introducing and deploying the best new technologies for complete computational systems . 46 Cray provides the next major NERSC system. 48 BVSS and PERCU: A comprehensive approach to HPC procurement . 49 NERSC Global Filesystem marks first full year in production . 50 Integrating NERSC’s storage and file systems . 50 OSF power supply is upgraded . 51 Meeting security challenges and sharing expertise . 51 Science-Driven Services : : Enabling a broad range of scientists to use NERSC systems productively in their research . 54 NERSC marks fourth year of INCITE applications . ..