inSiDE • Vol. 6 No.1 • Spring 2008 Innovatives Supercomputing in Deutschland Editorialproposals for the development of soft- Contents ware in the field of high performance Welcome to this first issue of inSiDE in computing. The projects within this soft- 2008. German supercomputing is keep- ware framework are expected to start News ing the pace of the last year with the in autumn 2008 and inSiDE will keep Automotive Simulation Centre Stuttgart (ASCS) founded 4 Gauss Centre for Supercomputing taking reporting on this. the lead. The collaboration between the JUGENE officially unveiled 6 three national supercomputing centres Again we have included a section on (HLRS, LRZ and NIC) is making good applications running on one of the three PRACE Project launched 7 progress. At the same time European main German supercomputing systems. supercomputing has seen a boost. In this In this issue the reader will find six issue you will read about the most recent articles about the various fields of appli- Applications developments in the field in Germany. cations and how they exploit the various Drag Reduction by Dimples? architectures made available. The sec- An Investigation Relying Upon HPC 8 In January the European supercomput- tion not only reflects the wide variety of ing infrastructure project PRACE was simulation research in Germany but at Turbulent Convection in large-aspect-ratio Cells 14 started and is making excellent prog- the same time nicely shows how various Editorial ress led by Prof. Achim Bachem from architectures provide users with the Direct Numerical Simulation Contents the Gauss Centre. In February the fast- best hardware technology for all of their of Flame / Acoustic Interactions 18 est civil supercomputer JUGENE was problems. officially unveiled at the Jülich Research Massively parallel single and Centre. The IBM BlueGene/P system In the project section we present a multi-phase Flow in porous Media 22 will provide German and European look at one of the key projects in Europe researchers with a peak speed of for the usage of high performance com- Unravelling the Mechanism How Stars Explode 26 223 TFlop/s. With this new installation puters DEISA. This has recently been Germany is knocking at the PFlops-door. extended and you will find a report on The Aquarius Project: Cold Dark Matter • Prof. Dr. H.-G. In March the University of Stuttgart and the new and extended focus here. The under a Numerical Microscope 32 Hegering (LRZ) HLRS together with its partners from close cooperation between the super- industry founded the Automotive Simula- computing community and the Grid • Prof. Dr. Dr. Th. tion Centre Stuttgart (ASCS). The focus community is reflected in the project Projects Lippert (NIC) of ASCS is on simulation in automotive report on SmartLM which focuses on IRMOS – Interactive Real-time Multimedia • Prof. Dr.-Ing. M. M. engineering that require high perfor- Grid-friendly software licensing for loca- Applications on Service-oriented Infrastructures 36 Resch (HLRS) mance computing. The ultimate goal is tion independent application execution. to support automotive industry in meet- The importance of visualization tools DEISA to enhance the European ing the challenging targets in CO2 re- to understand the results of simula- HPC Infrastructure in FP7 40 duction as put forward by the European tion is shown in the IRMOS project. It Commission recently. introduces interactive real-time multi- SmartLM – Grid-friendly Software Licensing media applications on service oriented for Location independent Application Execution 42 All these activities are evolutionary infrastructures. A further specifically steps towards a German and European interesting project focusing on optimal Toward Optimal Load Balance in Parallel hardware and software landscape that load balance in parallel programs for Programs for Geophysical Simulations 44 is able to provide researchers with a geophysical simulations is also featured. competitive cyberinfrastructure which allows them to see eye-to-eye with col- As usual, this issue includes information Centres 48 leagues in the US and Japan. In addition about events in supercomputing in Ger- to these activities over the last months many over the last months and gives an Activities 58 the Federal Ministry of Education and outlook of future workshops in the field. Research (BMBF) has issued a call for Readers are welcome to participate. Courses 66 Spring 2008 • Vol. 6 No. 1 • inSiDE Spring 2008 • Vol. 6 No. 1 • inSiDE 3 Automotive Simulation Members of the ASCS contribute to the funding with an annual contribution. Centre Stuttgart (ASCS) The founding partners of ASCS are: founded Abaqus Deutschland GmbH, Adam Opel GmbH, Altair Engineering GmbH, Cray Computer Deutschland GmbH, A step forward in bringing high per- Dr. Thomas Weber, member of the Daimler AG, Dr.-Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, formance computing to automotive board of Daimler AG and of the board Dynamore, Engineous GmbH, Research industry was made on March 7th, of the University of Stuttgart said: Institute for Automotive and Engine 2008 at Stuttgart. Private and pub- “This first transfer centre between the Design (FKFS), INTES GmbH, the lic partners joined the University of University of Stuttgart and industry will University of Stuttgart, The Virtual Stuttgart in creating a centre for the further strengthen our competence in Dimension Centre Fellbach, Wilhelm collaboration in automotive simulation automotive and transportation technol- Karman GmbH. Only four weeks after on high performance computing sys- ogy and will further improve the com- computing in production planning and the foundation NEC Europe joined the tems. For the University of Stuttgart petitiveness of Germany as a location optimization. By bringing together pub- centre as a full member. Collaboration this is a further step to strengthen its for research and development”. Added lic and private research ASCS aims with IBM and further hardware News industrial collaboration and to focus Wolfgang Dürnberger, member of the at shortening the innovation cycle in vendors is currently discussed. News the activities of its High Performance board of Porsche AG: “ASCS has a automotive simulation technology thus Computing Centre Stuttgart (HLRS) in pilot character for the collaboration of increasing the quality of automotive The centre is the first in a series of the field of computational engineering. research and industry and is setting products. Initial funding of ASCS is simulation centres that the State of For automotive industry, software and an example for Europe.” Prof. Wolfram provided by the University of Stuttgart Baden-Württemberg wants to intro- hardware vendors this is a step closer Ressel, President of the University of and the State of Baden-Württemberg duce in order to improve the know-how to public research organizations. The Stuttgart, who had been a driving force over a period of three years. Industrial transfer between research and industry common driving force is the need to behind the ASCS said: “The big interest partners will bring in additional funding over the next years. Further similar substantially reduce CO2 emissions of industry in such a collaboration again for this first startup period. After that centres are planned for energy simula- while sustaining an economically leading emphasizes the outstanding level of ASCS will work based on public and pri- tion, chemical simulation, and biomedi- position in the field. quality and performance of research at vate funding and will be self-sustaining. cal simulation. the University of Stuttgart.” ASCS will focus on pre-competitive research in fields that require simula- tion on high performance computing systems. First projects are currently discussed with the board of ASCS. Among the most important problems are multidisciplinary optimization and combustion. Both require a high level of compute performance and expertise in computational engineering on high performance computers available at the HLRS. Further topics to be covered by the projects of ASCS will be material sci- ence investigations and the usage of simulation and high performance President Prof. Wolfram Ressel at the foundation of ASCS Founding members at the foundation ceremony of ASCS on March 7th, 2008 4 Spring 2008 • Vol. 6 No. 1 • inSiDE Spring 2008 • Vol. 6 No. 1 • inSiDE 5 JUGENE officially unveiled PRACE Project launched On February 22th, 2008, the supercom- fastest civil supercomputer”, he PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced To achieve these challenging goals, the puter IBM Blue Gene/P JUGENE was said approvingly, “but it also offers a Computing in Europe, has reached an- researchers from the partner organi- officially unveiled at Research Centre network of education opportunities other milestone in its mission to create zations firmed up details of the project Jülich. More than 250 guests attended and top research in the simulation a European high-performance computing workplan during the kick-off meeting at the inauguration ceremony which found sciences. There is a vigorous, multi- infrastructure. At the end of 2007 the Jülich. One task is to define a suitable its highlight in the go-ahead given by faceted research and technology project received a grant of € 10 million legal form and organizational struc- Prime Minister Dr. Jürgen Rüttgers landscape in this area that makes from the European Commission towards ture for the permanent European HPC together with State Secretary Thomas North-Rhine Westphalia the number its total budget of € 20