Edinburgh DiRAC Resource Grant
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
DiRAC (Distributed Research utilising Advanced Computing) is the integrated supercomputing facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, nuclear physics, astronomy and cosmology, areas in which the UK is world-leading. It was funded as a result of investment of £12.32 million, from the Government's Large Facilities Capital Fund, together with investment from STFC and from universities. In 2012, the DiRAC facility was upgraded with a further £15 million capital investment from government (DiRAC-2).
The DiRAC facility provides a variety of computer architectures, matching machine architecture to the algorithm design and requirements of the research problems to be solved. The science facilitated includes: using supercomputers to enable scientists to calculate what theories of the early universe predict and to test them against observations of the present universe; undertaking lattice field theory calculations whose primary aim is to increase the predictive power of the Standard Model of elementary particle interactions through numerical simulation of Quantum Chromodynamics; carrying out state-of-the-art cosmological simulations, including the large-scale distribution of dark matter, the formation of dark matter haloes, the formation and evolution of galaxies and clusters, the physics of the intergalactic medium and the properties of the intracluster gas.
This grant is to support the continued operation of the DiRAC facilities until 2017 to ensure that the UK remains one of the world-leaders of theoretical modelling in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology.
The DiRAC facility provides a variety of computer architectures, matching machine architecture to the algorithm design and requirements of the research problems to be solved. The science facilitated includes: using supercomputers to enable scientists to calculate what theories of the early universe predict and to test them against observations of the present universe; undertaking lattice field theory calculations whose primary aim is to increase the predictive power of the Standard Model of elementary particle interactions through numerical simulation of Quantum Chromodynamics; carrying out state-of-the-art cosmological simulations, including the large-scale distribution of dark matter, the formation of dark matter haloes, the formation and evolution of galaxies and clusters, the physics of the intergalactic medium and the properties of the intracluster gas.
This grant is to support the continued operation of the DiRAC facilities until 2017 to ensure that the UK remains one of the world-leaders of theoretical modelling in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology.
Planned Impact
The high-performance computing applications supported by DiRAC typically involve new algorithms and implementations optimised for high energy efficiency which impose demands on computer architectures that the computing industry has found useful for hardware and system software design and testing.
DiRAC researchers have on-going collaborations with computing companies that maintain this strong connection between the scientific goals of the DiRAC Consortium and the development of new computing technologies that drive the commercial high-performance computing market, with economic benefits to the companies involved and more powerful computing capabilities available to other application areas including many that address socio-economic challenges.
DiRAC researchers have on-going collaborations with computing companies that maintain this strong connection between the scientific goals of the DiRAC Consortium and the development of new computing technologies that drive the commercial high-performance computing market, with economic benefits to the companies involved and more powerful computing capabilities available to other application areas including many that address socio-economic challenges.
People |
ORCID iD |
Richard Kenway (Principal Investigator) | |
Peter Boyle (Co-Investigator) |
Publications
Kruijssen J
(2020)
Kraken reveals itself - the merger history of the Milky Way reconstructed with the E-MOSAICS simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Henriques B
(2020)
L-GALAXIES 2020: Spatially resolved cold gas phases, star formation, and chemical enrichment in galactic discs
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Athenodorou A
(2016)
Large mass hierarchies from strongly-coupled dynamics
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Del Debbio L
(2016)
Large volumes and spectroscopy of walking theories
in Physical Review D
Boyle P
(2020)
Latest Results on Lattice Calculation Concerning K ? p l + l - Decays
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Blum T
(2016)
Lattice calculation of the leading strange quark-connected contribution to the muon g - 2
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Blum T
(2021)
Lattice determination of I = 0 and 2 p p scattering phase shifts with a physical pion mass
in Physical Review D
Horsley R
(2015)
Lattice determination of Sigma-Lambda mixing
in Physical Review D
Can K
(2020)
Lattice QCD evaluation of the Compton amplitude employing the Feynman-Hellmann theorem
in Physical Review D
Davies CTH
(2020)
Lattice QCD Matrix Elements for the B_{s}^{0}-B[over ¯]_{s}^{0} Width Difference beyond Leading Order.
in Physical review letters
Radia M
(2022)
Lessons for adaptive mesh refinement in numerical relativity
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Bolton J
(2022)
Limits on non-canonical heating and turbulence in the intergalactic medium from the low redshift Lyman a forest
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Reid J
(2021)
Linking computational models to follow the evolution of heated coronal plasma
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Vera-Casanova A
(2022)
Linking the brightest stellar streams with the accretion history of Milky Way like galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lovell M
(2020)
Local group star formation in warm and self-interacting dark matter cosmologies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Baraffe I
(2022)
Local heating due to convective overshooting and the solar modelling problem
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Zhu Y
(2022)
Long Dark Gaps in the Lyß Forest at z < 6: Evidence of Ultra-late Reionization from XQR-30 Spectra
in The Astrophysical Journal
Christ Norman
(2016)
Long distance contributions to the rare kaon decay $K?pl^+l^-$
in PoS
Keating L
(2020)
Long troughs in the Lyman-a forest below redshift 6 due to islands of neutral hydrogen
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Barrera-Hinojosa C
(2022)
Looking for a twist: probing the cosmological gravitomagnetic effect via weak lensing-kSZ cross-correlations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Boyle P
(2016)
Low energy constants of S U ( 2 ) partially quenched chiral perturbation theory from N f = 2 + 1 domain wall QCD
in Physical Review D
Gurung-López S
(2019)
Lya emitters in a cosmological volume II: the impact of the intergalactic medium
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Boyle P.
(2016)
Machines and algorithms
in Proceedings of Science
Santos-Santos I
(2021)
Magellanic satellites in ?CDM cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of the Local Group
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Matteini L
(2020)
Magnetic Field Turbulence in the Solar Wind at Sub-ion Scales: In Situ Observations and Numerical Simulations
in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences
Matsumoto J
(2021)
Magnetic inhibition of the recollimation instability in relativistic jets
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Howson T
(2021)
Magnetic reconnection and the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the solar corona
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Mason S
(2022)
Magnetoconvection in a rotating spherical shell in the presence of a uniform axial magnetic field
in Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics
Armijo J
(2022)
Making use of sub-resolution haloes in N -body simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Helfer T
(2022)
Malaise and remedy of binary boson-star initial data
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Robertson A
(2020)
Mapping dark matter and finding filaments: calibration of lensing analysis techniques on simulated data
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Aviles A
(2020)
Marked correlation functions in perturbation theory
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Owen J
(2020)
Massive discs around low-mass stars
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Trayford J
(2020)
Massive low-surface-brightness galaxies in the eagle simulation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Boyle P
(2017)
Massive momentum-subtraction scheme
in Physical Review D
Pedersen C
(2020)
Massive neutrinos and degeneracies in Lyman-alpha forest simulations
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Stevenson P
(2022)
Mean-field simulations of Es-254 + Ca-48 heavy-ion reactions
in Frontiers in Physics
Maitra S
(2022)
Measurement of redshift-space two- and three-point correlation of Lya absorbers at 1.7 < z < 3.5: implications on evolution of the physical properties of IGM
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Li B
(2020)
Measuring the baryon acoustic oscillation peak position with different galaxy selections
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Garzilli A
(2020)
Measuring the temperature and profiles of Ly a absorbers
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Srisawat C
(2020)
MEGA: Merger graphs of structure formation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Dillamore A
(2022)
Merger-induced galaxy transformations in the artemis simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Nikolaev A
(2020)
Mesonic correlators at non-zero baryon chemical potential
Guo Y
(2020)
Metal Enrichment in the Circumgalactic Medium and Ly a Halos around Quasars at z ~ 3
in The Astrophysical Journal
Dutta R
(2021)
Metal-enriched halo gas across galaxy overdensities over the last 10 billion years
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Gronow S
(2021)
Metallicity-dependent nucleosynthetic yields of Type Ia supernovae originating from double detonations of sub- M Ch white dwarfs
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lega E
(2022)
Migration of Jupiter mass planets in discs with laminar accretion flows
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lega E
(2021)
Migration of Jupiter-mass planets in low-viscosity discs
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hamilton E
(2021)
Model of gravitational waves from precessing black-hole binaries through merger and ringdown
in Physical Review D
Franci L
(2020)
Modeling MMS Observations at the Earth's Magnetopause with Hybrid Simulations of Alfvénic Turbulence
in The Astrophysical Journal
Description | In December 2009, the STFC Facility, DiRAC, was established to provide distributed High Performance Computing (HPC) services for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. DiRAC provides a variety of computer architectures, matching machine architecture to the algorithm design and requirements of the research problems to be solved. This grant funds the continued operation of the 1.3Pflop/s Blue Gene/Q system at the University of Edinburgh, which was co-developed by Peter Boyle (University of Edinburgh) and IBM to run with high energy efficiency for months at a time on a single problem to solve some of the most complex problems in physics, particularly the strong interactions of quarks and gluons. The DiRAC Facility supports over 250 active researchers at 27 UK HEIs. This includes the research projects of 100 funded research staff (PDRAs and Research Fellows), over 50 post-graduate projects, and £1.6M of funded research grants. |
Exploitation Route | Theoretical results obtained input to a range of experimental programmes aiming to increase our understanding of Nature. Algorithms and software developed provide input to computer design. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
URL | http://dirac.ac.uk/ |
Description | Intel IPAG QCD codesign project |
Organisation | Intel Corporation |
Department | Intel Corporation (Jones Farm) |
Country | United States |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | We have collaborated with Intel corporation since 2014 with $720k of total direct funding, starting initially as an Intel parallel computing centre, and expanding to direct close collaboration with Intel Pathfinding and Architecture Group. |
Collaborator Contribution | We have performed detailed optimisation of QCD codes (Wilson, Domain Wall, Staggered) on Intel many core architectures. We have investigated the memory system and interconnect performance, particularly on Intel's latest interconnect hardware called Omnipath. We found serious performance issues and worked with Intel to plan a solution and this has been verified and is available as beta software. It will reach general availability in the Intel MPI 2019 release, and allow threaded concurrent communications in MPI for the first time. A joint paper on the resolution to this was written with the Intel MPI team, and the application of the same QCD programming techniques to machine learning gradient reduction was applied in the paper to the Baidu Research all reduce library, demonstrating a 10x gain for this critical step in machine learning in clustered environments. We are also working with Intel verifying future architectures that will deliver the exascale performance in 2021. |
Impact | We have performed detailed optimisation of QCD codes (Wilson, Domain Wall, Staggered) on Intel many core architectures. We have investigated the memory system and interconnect performance, particularly on Intel's latest interconnect hardware called Omnipath. We found serious performance issues and worked with Intel to plan a solution and this has been verified and is available as beta software. It will reach general availability in the Intel MPI 2019 release, and allow threaded concurrent communications in MPI for the first time. A joint paper on the resolution to this was written with the Intel MPI team, and the application of the same QCD programming techniques to machine learning gradient reduction was applied in the paper to the Baidu Research all reduce library, demonstrating a 10x gain for this critical step in machine learning in clustered environments. This collaboration has been renewed annually in 2018, 2019, 2020. Two DiRAC RSE's were hired by Intel to work on the Turing collaboration. |
Start Year | 2016 |