DiRAC BlueGene/Q Upgrade
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
The BlueGene/Q computer that serves the DiRAC Consortium will be upgraded to increase its compute capability by 50% to ensure that it remains an internationally competitive supercomputer for as long as possible, enabling UK scientists to carry out the most demanding simulations in particle physics and astrophysics. The BlueGene/Q architecture has been designed to enable highly energy-efficient and compute-intensive simulations of the strong force between quarks and gluons, and it will be used primarily for high precision calculations of Standard Model processes that can be compared with experimental measurements to search for signals of new physics. It will also be used to explore nuclear matter at high temperatures and densities, to understand the origin of the masses of elementary particles, and for a range of astrophysics simulations related to cosmology, galaxy and star formation.
Planned Impact
The contribution to the design, prototyping and testing of BlueGene/Q will enable IBM to bring a better product to market. The ongoing software development will help to ensure these machines are utilised effectively for a wide range of applications that benefit the economy, the environment and our health, and, by training members of the DiRAC Consortium in using the most advanced supercomputer technology, it will enhance computing skills in the workforce.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
Richard Kenway (Principal Investigator) | |
Peter Boyle (Co-Investigator) |
Publications
Hudspith R
(2018)
$a_s$ from the Lattice Hadronic Vacuum Polarisation
Chambers A
(2015)
A novel approach to nonperturbative renormalization of singlet and nonsinglet lattice operators
in Physics Letters B
Patella A
(2012)
A precise determination of the ? ¯ ? anomalous dimension in conformal gauge theories
in Physical Review D
Evans P
(2014)
Ab initio calculation of finite-temperature charmonium potentials
in Physical Review D
Boyle P
(2016)
An exploratory study of heavy domain wall fermions on the lattice
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Black M
(2022)
B Meson Decay Constants Using Relativistic Heavy Quarks
Black M
(2023)
B Meson Decay Constants Using Relativistic Heavy Quarks
Boyle P
(2018)
Beyond the Standard Model Kaon Mixing with Physical Masses
Aarts G
(2014)
Bottomonium in the plasma: Lattice results
in EPJ Web of Conferences
Blum T
(2018)
Calculation of the Hadronic Vacuum Polarization Contribution to the Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment.
in Physical review letters
Blum T
(2016)
Calculation of the Hadronic Vacuum Polarization Disconnected Contribution to the Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment.
in Physical review letters
Shanahan P
(2015)
Charge symmetry violation in the electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon
in Physical Review D
Boyle P.
(2016)
Charm physics with domain wall fermions and physical pion masses
in Proceedings of Science
Tsang J
(2015)
Charm physics with Moebius Domain Wall Fermions
Jüttner A.
(2014)
Charm physics with physical light and strange quarks using domain wall fermions
in Proceedings of Science
Evans W
(2014)
Charmonium Potentials at Non-Zero Temperature
Aarts Gert
(2012)
Complex Langevin dynamics and other approaches at finite chemical potential
in PoS
Bongiovanni L
(2015)
Complex Langevin dynamics for SU(3) gauge theory in the presence of a theta term
Aarts G
(2016)
Complex Langevin in Lattice QCD: Dynamic Stabilisation and the Phase Diagram
in Acta Physica Polonica B Proceedings Supplement
Zanotti J
(2015)
Connected and disconnected quark contributions to hadron spin
Maltman K
(2019)
Current Status of inclusive hadronic tau determinations of |V_us|
in SciPost Physics Proceedings
Boz T
(2020)
Dense two-color QCD towards continuum and chiral limits
in Physical Review D
Cotter S
(2014)
Determination of Karsch Coefficients for 2-colour QCD
Janowski T
(2014)
Determination of the $A_2$ amplitude of $K\to\pi\pi$ decays
Janowski T.
(2013)
Determination of the A2 amplitude of K ?pp decays
in Proceedings of Science
Shanahan PE
(2015)
Determination of the strange nucleon form factors.
in Physical review letters
Horsley R
(2015)
Determining Sigma - Lambda mixing
Hands S
(2015)
Domain wall fermions for planar physics
in Journal of High Energy Physics
RBC Collaboration
(2012)
Domain Wall QCD with Near-Physical Pions
Arthur R
(2013)
Domain wall QCD with near-physical pions
in Physical Review D
Blum T
(2016)
Domain wall QCD with physical quark masses
in Physical Review D
Sivalingam K
(2014)
DWF Solvers and Clover for BGQ
Guo FK
(2015)
Electric Dipole Moment of the Neutron from 2+1 Flavor Lattice QCD.
in Physical review letters
Shanahan P
(2014)
Electric form factors of the octet baryons from lattice QCD and chiral extrapolation
in Physical Review D
Aarts G
(2015)
Electrical conductivity and charge diffusion in thermal QCD from the lattice
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Amato A
(2013)
Electrical conductivity of the quark-gluon plasma across the deconfinement transition.
in Physical review letters
Gülpers V.
(2016)
Electromagnetic corrections to meson masses and the HVP
in Proceedings of Science
Boyle PA
(2013)
Emerging understanding of the ?I=1/2 rule from lattice QCD.
in Physical review letters
Garron N
(2022)
Exploring interpolating momentum schemes
Garron N
(2022)
Exploring interpolating momentum schemes
Description | The objective to upgrade the computational capabilities of the BlueGene/Q computer, which is part of the DiRAC (Distributed Research utilising Advanced Computing) National Facility, by 50% was achieved successfully. The equipment was procured, delivered, installed and brought into service according to the originally agreed schedule. It has been operating reliably since July 2012 to support the research programmes of the UK theoretical particle physics, astrophysics and nuclear physics communities. The upgrade has ensured that the UK continues to have an internationally competitive computing capability that operates at one of the highest levels of energy efficiency in the world, as a consequence of the computer and machine room designs, both of which benefitted from expertise of staff at the University of Edinburgh |
Exploitation Route | Access to time on the system is granted through peer review conducted by the DiRAC Resource Allocation Committee. The first round of allocations has been to projects studying the structure, interactions and decays of hadrons, properties of the strong interactions of quarks and gluons at high temperatures, and new strongly-interacting gauge theories that might explain electroweak symmetry breaking. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
Description | The collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and IBM which developed the BlueGene/Q architecture has continued in two respects: on-going improvements to the BlueGene/Q system software to optimise application performance, which are benefitting a wide range of computational science projects worldwide, and a successor project to develop a new architecture for exascale computing. This work ensures that the expertise at Edinburgh, and more widely in the DiRAC Consortium, in exploiting leading-edge HPC systems for the most demanding physics applications continues to feed into IBM's commercial development. In 2013, IBM terminated the BlueGene R&D project and our work on exascale architectures is continuing with another vendor. Access to the BlueGene/Q facility may be purchased by industry users, along with consultancy and technical support from EPCC. |
First Year Of Impact | 2012 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
Impact Types | Cultural,Economic |
Description | PPRP |
Amount | £427,192 (GBP) |
Funding ID | ST/K005804/1 |
Organisation | Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 05/2012 |
End | 04/2015 |
Description | PPRP |
Amount | £241,949 (GBP) |
Funding ID | ST/K005790/1 |
Organisation | Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 05/2012 |
End | 04/2015 |
Description | Standard (FEC) |
Amount | £2,393,688 (GBP) |
Funding ID | ST/L000458/1 |
Organisation | Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 10/2014 |
End | 09/2017 |
Description | Standard (FEC) |
Amount | £1,370,934 (GBP) |
Funding ID | ST/M006530/1 |
Organisation | Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 05/2015 |
End | 03/2017 |