The DiRAC 2.5x Facility
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leicester
Department Name: Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
Physicists across the astronomy, nuclear and particle physics communities are focussed
on understanding how the Universe works at a very fundamental level. The distance scales
with which they work vary by 50 orders of magnitude from the smallest distances probed
by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, deep within the atomic
nucleus, to the largest scale galaxy clusters discovered out in space. The Science challenges,
however, are linked through questions such as: How did the Universe begin and how is it evolving?
and What are the fundamental constituents and fabric of the Universe and how do they interact?
Progress requires new astronomical observations and experimental data but also
new theoretical insights. Theoretical understanding comes increasingly from large-scale
computations that allow us to confront the consequences of our theories very accurately
with the data or allow us to interrogate the data in detail to extract information that has
impact on our theories. These computations test the fastest computers that we have and
push the boundaries of technology in this sector. They also provide an excellent
environment for training students in state-of-the-art techniques for code optimisation and
data mining and visualisation.
The DiRAC2 HPC facility has been operating since 2012, providing computing resources for theoretical research
in all areas of particle physics, astronomy, cosmology and nuclear physics supported by STFC. It is a highly productive
facility, generating more than 250 papers annually in international, peer-reviewed journals. However, the DiRAC2 hardware is now at least 5 years old and is therefore at significant risk of failure. The loss of any one of the DiRAC2 services
would have a potentially disastrous impact on the research communities which rely on it to deliver their scientific research. The main
purpose of the requested funding for the DiRAC2.5x project is to replace the ageing DiRAC2 hardware at Durham, Edinburgh and Leicester
while taking advantage of recent hardware advances to provide some new capabilities (e.g. i/o acceleration using flash storage) as prototypes for
the proposed DiRAC3 services.
DiRAC2.5x builds on the success of the DiRAC HPC facility and will provide the resources needed to support cutting-edge research
during 2018 in all areas of science supported by STFC. While the funding is required to "keep the lights on", the science programme will continue to be
world-leading. Examples of the projects which will benefit from this investment include:
(i) lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculations of the properties of fundamental particles from first principles;
(ii) improving the potential of experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider for discovery of new physics by increasing the accuracy of theoretical predictions for rare processes involving the fundamental constituents of matter known as quarks;
(iii) simulations of the merger of pairs of black holes which generate gravitational waves such as those recently discovered by the LIGO consortium;
(iv) the most realistic simulations to date of the formation and evolution of galaxies in the Universe;
(v) the accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes, the most efficient means of extracting energy from matter and the engine which drives galaxy formation and evolution;
(vi) new models of our own Milky Way galaxy calibrated using new data from the European Space Agency's GAIA satellite;
(vii) detailed simulations of the interior of the sun and of planetary interiors;
(viii) the formation of stars in clusters - for the first time it will be possible to follow the formation of stars many times more massive than the sun.
on understanding how the Universe works at a very fundamental level. The distance scales
with which they work vary by 50 orders of magnitude from the smallest distances probed
by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, deep within the atomic
nucleus, to the largest scale galaxy clusters discovered out in space. The Science challenges,
however, are linked through questions such as: How did the Universe begin and how is it evolving?
and What are the fundamental constituents and fabric of the Universe and how do they interact?
Progress requires new astronomical observations and experimental data but also
new theoretical insights. Theoretical understanding comes increasingly from large-scale
computations that allow us to confront the consequences of our theories very accurately
with the data or allow us to interrogate the data in detail to extract information that has
impact on our theories. These computations test the fastest computers that we have and
push the boundaries of technology in this sector. They also provide an excellent
environment for training students in state-of-the-art techniques for code optimisation and
data mining and visualisation.
The DiRAC2 HPC facility has been operating since 2012, providing computing resources for theoretical research
in all areas of particle physics, astronomy, cosmology and nuclear physics supported by STFC. It is a highly productive
facility, generating more than 250 papers annually in international, peer-reviewed journals. However, the DiRAC2 hardware is now at least 5 years old and is therefore at significant risk of failure. The loss of any one of the DiRAC2 services
would have a potentially disastrous impact on the research communities which rely on it to deliver their scientific research. The main
purpose of the requested funding for the DiRAC2.5x project is to replace the ageing DiRAC2 hardware at Durham, Edinburgh and Leicester
while taking advantage of recent hardware advances to provide some new capabilities (e.g. i/o acceleration using flash storage) as prototypes for
the proposed DiRAC3 services.
DiRAC2.5x builds on the success of the DiRAC HPC facility and will provide the resources needed to support cutting-edge research
during 2018 in all areas of science supported by STFC. While the funding is required to "keep the lights on", the science programme will continue to be
world-leading. Examples of the projects which will benefit from this investment include:
(i) lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculations of the properties of fundamental particles from first principles;
(ii) improving the potential of experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider for discovery of new physics by increasing the accuracy of theoretical predictions for rare processes involving the fundamental constituents of matter known as quarks;
(iii) simulations of the merger of pairs of black holes which generate gravitational waves such as those recently discovered by the LIGO consortium;
(iv) the most realistic simulations to date of the formation and evolution of galaxies in the Universe;
(v) the accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes, the most efficient means of extracting energy from matter and the engine which drives galaxy formation and evolution;
(vi) new models of our own Milky Way galaxy calibrated using new data from the European Space Agency's GAIA satellite;
(vii) detailed simulations of the interior of the sun and of planetary interiors;
(viii) the formation of stars in clusters - for the first time it will be possible to follow the formation of stars many times more massive than the sun.
Planned Impact
The anticipated impact of the DiRAC2.5x HPC facility aligns closely with the recently published UK Industrial Strategy. As such, many of our key impacts will be driven by
our engagements with industry. Each service provider for DiRAC2.5x has a local industrial strategy to deliver increased levels of industrial returns over the next three years.
The "Pathways to impact" document which is attached to this proposal describes the overall industrial strategy for DiRAC2.5x, including our strategic goals and key performance indicators.
our engagements with industry. Each service provider for DiRAC2.5x has a local industrial strategy to deliver increased levels of industrial returns over the next three years.
The "Pathways to impact" document which is attached to this proposal describes the overall industrial strategy for DiRAC2.5x, including our strategic goals and key performance indicators.
Organisations
- University of Leicester (Collaboration, Lead Research Organisation)
- Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) (Collaboration)
- Saclay Nuclear Research Centre (Collaboration)
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) (Collaboration)
- Microsoft Research Limited (Project Partner)
- StackHPC Limited (Project Partner)
Publications
Koudmani S
(2019)
Fast and energetic AGN-driven outflows in simulated dwarf galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Muni C
(2024)
From particles to orbits: precise dark matter density profiles using dynamical information
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Coleman G
(2024)
Photoevaporation obfuscates the distinction between wind and viscous angular momentum transport in protoplanetary discs
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Nasir F
(2017)
The effect of stellar and AGN feedback on the low-redshift Lyman a forest in the Sherwood simulation suite
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
McLeod A
(2021)
The impact of pre-supernova feedback and its dependence on environment
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Grisdale K
(2021)
Physical properties and scaling relations of molecular clouds: the impact of star formation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Haworth T
(2019)
The first multidimensional view of mass loss from externally FUV irradiated protoplanetary discs
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kupilas M
(2021)
Interactions of a shock with a molecular cloud at various stages of its evolution due to thermal instability and gravity
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ziampras A
(2024)
Migration of low-mass planets in inviscid discs: the effect of radiation transport on the dynamical corotation torque
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Hands T
(2018)
Breaking mean-motion resonances during Type I planet migration
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Katz H
(2023)
Two modes of LyC escape from bursty star formation: implications for [C ii ] deficits and the sources of reionization
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Faber C
(2018)
Feeding supermassive black holes by collisional cascades
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
McNally C
(2019)
Migrating super-Earths in low-viscosity discs: unveiling the roles of feedback, vortices, and laminar accretion flows
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Nayakshin S
(2020)
The paradox of youth for ALMA planet candidates
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Sartorio N
(2021)
Photoionization feedback in turbulent molecular clouds
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Vandenbroucke B
(2019)
Radiation hydrodynamics simulations of the evolution of the diffuse ionized gas in disc galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Humphries J
(2019)
On the origin of wide-orbit ALMA planets: giant protoplanets disrupted by their cores
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Arthur J
(2017)
nIFTy galaxy cluster simulations - V. Investigation of the cluster infall region
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ballabio G
(2018)
Enforcing dust mass conservation in 3D simulations of tightly coupled grains with the Phantom SPH code
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ziampras A
(2023)
Modelling planet-induced gaps and rings in ALMA discs: the role of in-plane radiative diffusion
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Owen J
(2020)
Testing exoplanet evaporation with multitransiting systems
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Coleman G
(2023)
Global N -body simulations of circumbinary planet formation around Kepler-16 and -34 analogues I: Exploring the pebble accretion scenario
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Katz H
(2020)
New methods for identifying Lyman continuum leakers and reionization-epoch analogues
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Scardoni C
(2022)
Inward and outward migration of massive planets: moving towards a stalling radius
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bolton J
(2017)
The Sherwood simulation suite: overview and data comparisons with the Lyman a forest at redshifts 2 = z = 5
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bate M
(2020)
Photoionizing feedback in spiral arm molecular clouds
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ali A
(2022)
Stellar winds and photoionization in a spiral arm
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kupilas M
(2022)
Shocking interactions of supernova remnants with atomic and molecular clouds - the interplay between shocks, thermal instability, and gravity in the large cloud regime
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Costa T
(2018)
Driving gas shells with radiation pressure on dust in radiation-hydrodynamic simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Iršic V
(2016)
The Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum from the XQ-100 Legacy Survey
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Martin-Alvarez S
(2020)
How primordial magnetic fields shrink galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cattaneo A
(2020)
GalICS 2.1: a new semianalytic model for cold accretion, cooling, feedback, and their roles in galaxy formation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Wurster J
(2024)
Star-forming environments in smoothed particle magnetohydrodynamics simulations II: re-simulating isolated clumps to determine equivalence of extracted clumps and parent simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Rice K
(2018)
On fragmentation of turbulent self-gravitating discs in the long cooling time regime
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Agertz O
(2020)
EDGE: the mass-metallicity relation as a critical test of galaxy formation physics
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Dobbs C
(2022)
The formation of clusters and OB associations in different density spiral arm environments
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Wurster J
(2021)
Do we need non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic to model protostellar discs?
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Rorai A
(2017)
Exploring the thermal state of the low-density intergalactic medium at z = 3 with an ultrahigh signal-to-noise QSO spectrum
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Appleby S
(2023)
The physical nature of circumgalactic medium absorbers in Simba
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Costa T
(2018)
Quenching star formation with quasar outflows launched by trapped IR radiation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Rey M
(2022)
EDGE: What shapes the relationship between H i and stellar observables in faint dwarf galaxies?
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Coleman G
(2024)
Constraining the formation history of the TOI-1338/BEBOP-1 circumbinary planetary system
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ziampras A
(2023)
Buoyancy response of a disc to an embedded planet: a cross-code comparison at high resolution
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Rogers J
(2023)
Exoplanet atmosphere evolution: emulation with neural networks
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Stiskalek R
(2022)
The scatter in the galaxy-halo connection: a machine learning analysis
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Orkney M
(2022)
EDGE: the puzzling ellipticity of Eridanus II's star cluster and its implications for dark matter at the heart of an ultra-faint dwarf
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Martin-Alvarez S
(2021)
Unravelling the origin of magnetic fields in galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Chachan Y
(2019)
Dust accretion in binary systems: implications for planets and transition discs
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Dehnen W
(2022)
Capture of interstellar objects - I. The capture cross-section
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Katz H
(2018)
A Census of the LyC photons that form the UV background during reionization
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
| Description | Many new discoveries about the formation and evolution of galaxies, star formation, planet formation have been made possible by the award. |
| Exploitation Route | Many international collaborative projects are supported by the HPC resources provided by DiRAC. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education |
| URL | http://www.dirac.ac.uk |
| Description | Major co-design project with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, including partnership in the HPE/Arm/Suse Catalyst UK programme. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2017 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
| Impact Types | Societal |
| Description | DiRAC 2.5x Project Office 2017-2020 |
| Amount | £300,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2018 |
| End | 03/2020 |
| Title | Citation analysys and Impact |
| Description | Use of IT to determineacademic impact of eInfrastructure |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Understood emerging trends in DiRAC Science and helped decide the scale and type of IT investments and direct us to develop new technologies |
| URL | http://www.dirac.ac.uk |
| Description | Co-design project with Hewlett Packard Enterprise |
| Organisation | Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Technical support and operations costs for running the hardware. Research workflows to test the system performance, and investment of academic time and software engineering time to optimise code for new hardware. Project will explore suitability of hardware for DiRAC workflows and provide feedback to HPE. |
| Collaborator Contribution | In-kind provision of research computing hardware. Value is commercially confidential. |
| Impact | As this collaboration is about to commence, there are no outcomes to report at this point. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | DiRAC |
| Organisation | Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) |
| Department | Distributed Research Utilising Advanced Computing |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | I am the PI for two research grants for the procurement and running of the Complexity@DiRAC High Performance Computing cluster at the University of Leicester. This cluster is now in active operation as a national HPC facility. |
| Collaborator Contribution | DiRAC is the facility which provides HPC resources for the theoretical astrophysics and particle physics communities within STFC. |
| Impact | The establishment and running of a new HPC cluster at the University of Leicester as part of the DiRAC national facility. |
| Start Year | 2011 |
| Description | STFC Centres for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science |
| Organisation | University of Leicester |
| Department | STFC DiRAC Complexity Cluster (HPC Facility Leicester) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Support for STFC Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Data Intensive Science - DiRAC is a partner in five of the eight of the newly established STFC CDTs, and is actively engaged with them in developing industrial partnerships. DiRAC is also offering placements to CDT students interested in Research Software Engineering roles. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Students to work on interesting technical problems for DiRAC |
| Impact | This is the first year |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Surrey-Saclay |
| Organisation | Saclay Nuclear Research Centre |
| Country | France |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Provided codes and know-how to develop GF Gorkov formalism and implementation. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Help spreading and advertise my research |
| Impact | Presentation of preliminary results at conference. Grant still ongoing. Results being written up. Output will be first ab-initio calculation of fully open shells. |
| Start Year | 2010 |