STFC DiRAC Project Office 2014-2017
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
It is now accepted that "computational science, the scientific investigation of physical processes through modelling and simulation on computers," is the third pillar of science, complementing and extending theory and experimentation" (International Review of Research using HPC in the UK, 2005).
The STFC DIRAC High Performance Computing Facility supports the simulation and modelling requirements of those communities that are represented by the Particle Physics Advisory Panel, Nuclear Physics Advisory Panel, Particle Astrophysics Advisory Panel, Astronomy Advisory Panel and the Solar System Science Advisory Panel.
Theoretical research in Particle Physics, Particle Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics, Astrophysics, Solar System and Planetary Science are world leading and DiRAC-enabled research has been published in high-impact refereed journals; 160 articles in 2010, 381 in 2011 and 2012 and over 250 papers produced in 2013 (see our publications list in our annual reports along with Science highlights at http://www.dirac.ac.uk/science.html ).
The STFC DIRAC High Performance Computing Facility supports the simulation and modelling requirements of those communities that are represented by the Particle Physics Advisory Panel, Nuclear Physics Advisory Panel, Particle Astrophysics Advisory Panel, Astronomy Advisory Panel and the Solar System Science Advisory Panel.
Theoretical research in Particle Physics, Particle Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics, Astrophysics, Solar System and Planetary Science are world leading and DiRAC-enabled research has been published in high-impact refereed journals; 160 articles in 2010, 381 in 2011 and 2012 and over 250 papers produced in 2013 (see our publications list in our annual reports along with Science highlights at http://www.dirac.ac.uk/science.html ).
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.
The DiRAC Facility is designed to enable breakthrough science in the areas of lattice quantum chromodynamics, hadron physics, beyond the standard model physics, black hole Physics, whole system modelling of stars, solar systems, galaxies, the local universe and large scale structures; the early Universe and its evolution, cosmology and the nature of dark energy and dark matter, the formation and evolution of stars and planets and larger structures, and the chemistry of the Cosmos.
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.
The DiRAC Facility is designed to enable breakthrough science in the areas of lattice quantum chromodynamics, hadron physics, beyond the standard model physics, black hole Physics, whole system modelling of stars, solar systems, galaxies, the local universe and large scale structures; the early Universe and its evolution, cosmology and the nature of dark energy and dark matter, the formation and evolution of stars and planets and larger structures, and the chemistry of the Cosmos.
Publications
Wen K
(2019)
Dissipation Dynamics of Nuclear Fusion Reactions
in Acta Physica Polonica B
Gronow S
(2020)
SNe Ia from double detonations: Impact of core-shell mixing on the carbon ignition mechanism
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pagano P
(2019)
MHD simulations of the in situ generation of kink and sausage waves in the solar corona by collision of dense plasma clumps
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Howson T
(2019)
Magnetohydrodynamic waves in braided magnetic fields
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hutchinson A
(2023)
Impact of corotation on gradual solar energetic particle event intensity profiles
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Rosito M
(2019)
The mass-size plane of EAGLE galaxies
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Soler J
(2022)
The Galactic dynamics revealed by the filamentary structure in atomic hydrogen emission
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Vandenbroucke B
(2020)
CMACIONIZE 2.0: a novel task-based approach to Monte Carlo radiation transfer
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Ziampras A
(2023)
Hydrodynamic turbulence in disks with embedded planets
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Bulla M
(2020)
White dwarf deflagrations for Type Iax supernovae: polarisation signatures from the explosion and companion interaction
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Rosito M
(2019)
Assembly of spheroid-dominated galaxies in the EAGLE simulation
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Debras F
(2019)
Eigenvectors, Circulation, and Linear Instabilities for Planetary Science in 3 Dimensions (ECLIPS3D)
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Drummond B
(2020)
Implications of three-dimensional chemical transport in hot Jupiter atmospheres: Results from a consistently coupled chemistry-radiation-hydrodynamics model
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Eager-Nash J
(2020)
Implications of different stellar spectra for the climate of tidally locked Earth-like exoplanets
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Mercer A
(2020)
Planet formation around M dwarfs via disc instability Fragmentation conditions and protoplanet properties
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Soler J
(2020)
The history of dynamics and stellar feedback revealed by the H I filamentary structure in the disk of the Milky Way
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Phillips M
(2020)
A new set of atmosphere and evolution models for cool T-Y brown dwarfs and giant exoplanets
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Nelson R
(2023)
Gas accretion onto Jupiter mass planets in discs with laminar accretion flows
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Richards A
(2014)
ALMA sub-mm maser and dust distribution of VY Canis Majoris
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Vincenzo F
(2019)
He abundances in disc galaxies I. Predictions from cosmological chemodynamical simulations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pagano P
(2019)
Contribution of observed multi frequency spectrum of Alfvén waves to coronal heating
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pagano P
(2020)
Effect of coronal loop structure on wave heating through phase mixing
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Andrassy R
(2022)
Dynamics in a stellar convective layer and at its boundary: Comparison of five 3D hydrodynamics codes
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Justtanont K
(2015)
Herschel observations of extreme OH/IR stars The isotopic ratios of oxygen as a sign-post for the stellar mass??
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hutchinson A
(2022)
Energetic proton back-precipitation onto the solar atmosphere in relation to long-duration gamma-ray flares
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hutchinson A
(2023)
Modelling shock-like injections of solar energetic particles with 3D test particle simulations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pariat E
(2023)
Comparison of magnetic energy and helicity in coronal jet simulations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pratt J
(2020)
Comparison of 2D and 3D compressible convection in a pre-main sequence star
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Potter M
(2019)
Forced magnetic reconnection and plasmoid coalescence I. Magnetohydrodynamic simulations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Rouillard A
(2020)
Models and data analysis tools for the Solar Orbiter mission
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Donevski D
(2020)
In pursuit of giants I. The evolution of the dust-to-stellar mass ratio in distant dusty galaxies
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pagano P
(2020)
Hydrogen non-equilibrium ionisation effects in coronal mass ejections
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Kelly G
(2015)
Mapping CS in starburst galaxies: Disentangling and characterising dense gas
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Reissl S
(2020)
Synthetic observations of spiral arm tracers of a simulated Milky Way analog
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Baraffe I
(2022)
Local heating due to convective overshooting and the solar modelling problem
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hildebrandt H
(2020)
KiDS+VIKING-450: Cosmic shear tomography with optical and infrared data
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Liu Y
(2019)
Ring structure in the MWC 480 disk revealed by ALMA
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Howson T
(2020)
Phase mixing and wave heating in a complex coronal plasma
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Nixon C
(2019)
What is wrong with steady accretion discs?
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hildebrandt H
(2020)
KiDS+VIKING-450: Cosmic shear tomography with optical and infrared data
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Joudaki S
(2020)
KiDS+VIKING-450 and DES-Y1 combined: Cosmology with cosmic shear
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Heath R
(2020)
On the orbital evolution of binaries with circumbinary discs
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Sainsbury-Martinez F
(2019)
Idealised simulations of the deep atmosphere of hot Jupiters Deep, hot adiabats as a robust solution to the radius inflation problem
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Green S
(2019)
Thermal emission from bow shocks I. 2D hydrodynamic models of the Bubble Nebula
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Blondin S
(2022)
StaNdaRT: a repository of standardised test models and outputs for supernova radiative transfer
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Debras F
(2019)
Acceleration of superrotation in simulated hot Jupiter atmospheres
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pierens A
(2023)
Three-dimensional evolution of radiative circumbinary discs: The size and shape of the inner cavity
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Le Saux A
(2022)
Two-dimensional simulations of solar-like models with artificially enhanced luminosity II. Impact on internal gravity waves
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Reid J
(2020)
Coronal energy release by MHD avalanches: Heating mechanisms
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Harries T
(2019)
The TORUS radiation transfer code
in Astronomy and Computing
Description | We support all of PPAN science. The main highlights have been the modelling of the first Gravitaitonal Waves (the discovery of which won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics), the accurate properties of the B quark, and the most detailed models of Galaxy formation bythe VIRGO consortium |
Exploitation Route | They have opened up new areasin Physics, particularly gravitational waves, calculating particle properties to be measured by the LHC and the use of baryonic physics in comsological models. Our advances in software and hardware design are applicable to all fields of study and commerce. a growing list of technology companies (ARM, Dell, HPE, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Nvidia). We have appointed an Innovation Director (Dr. Jeremy Yates) and used the 2017/18 BEIS capital investment to kick-start new strategic industrial collaborations. DiRAC's innovation strategy is aligned with the UK Industrial Strategy white paper. In particular, our strategy aims to: 1. Enhance engagement with industry around the challenges of machine learning and data intensive science. 2. Enhance engagement with broader Industry, the Hartree Centre, and other sectors on the exploitation and use of new technologies and of DiRAC computational resources. 3. Expand innovation programmes with industry partner(s) at all sites, including both component-level and system-level co-design and optimisation. 4. Further expand our comprehensive, in-house HPC skills training portfolio by working with industry partners and the eight STFC Centres for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science , thereby enhancing HPC skills training across the UK and increasing the net out-flow of upskilled workers into the UK economy. 5. Expand engagement with industrial partners on software engineering work for particle physics, astronomy and general HPC codes. 6. Increase industrial income and explore potential options for innovative business models to support the recurrent costs of services. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
URL | http://www.dirac.ac.uk |
Description | DiRAC has set up three Intel parallel computing centres which are being used to drive system design for heterogeneous architectures with SGI, writing maths libraries for intel and writing fine grained parallel task management libraries for intel. The work with SGI won an award at the SC15 for Best use of High Performance Data Analytics..• 4 EPSRC iCASE studentships co-funded by Intel/HP (Leicester), Intel/Cray (UCL), Intel/SGI (Cambridge), Intel/Lenovo (Durham); all in areas of advanced software design for new technologies. • DiRAC has secured 2 four-year PhD studentships with Mellanox/UCL and Lenovo/UCL in the areas of advanced cluster switch design and high volume and velocity machine learning, respectively. • DiRAC's Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Professor Peter Boyle, is the Co-Design leader for the Intel-Alan Turing Institute (ATI) Many Core Architecture Design team based in Edinburgh (one of only three teams worldwide). DiRAC's expertise provides the foundation upon which the ATI secured this unique international partnership with Intel's HPC architecture group, which has placed five hardware architects in Edinburgh, with Professor Boyle appointed both an Alan Turing Fellow and Co-Design Leader for the ATI. The two hardware architects hired by Intel to work with the ATI were two former DiRAC Research Software Engineers.• 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. • Innovate UK - DiRAC was invited to join an InnovateUK bid entitled "High Performance Cloud for Artificial Intelligence (HiPerCloud-AI)" with StackHPC, Concertim Infrastructure Management, VScaler and Intelligent Voice. The bid, submitted in response to the "Emerging and Enabling" call for proposals in November 2017, focussed on work aimed at the elimination of the disablingly large latency caused by Cloud Operating Systems when parallel codes are run on cloud-operated clusters. If successful, it will give the UK practical experience in building, deploying and running weakly and strongly parallel applications on cloud platforms.The £9M DiRAC-2.5x intervention alone generated more than £1.5M of inward investment in addition to significant vendor discounts. These investments include: • Installation of an ARM-based cluster at the University of Leicester as a co-design project to increase the value of ARM technology in HPC (value: approx. £1M); • Support for co-design work with Intel at Edinburgh (value: approx. £0.25M per annum); • Co-funding for DiRAC Technical Manager position at Edinburgh (value: £45k); • Co-funding for a DiRAC Research Software Engineer at Leicester (value: £45k); • Support for co-design projects in flash technologies to accelerate storage access (Cambridge/Dell), flash technologies to allow simulation check-pointing (Durham/Dell), Authentication, Authorisation & Accounting Infrastructure (Edinburgh/HPE), Hierarchical Storage Management (Leicester/HPE); • Support for skills training workshops for DiRAC users and technical support staff. |
First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
Impact Types | Economic |
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 | AAAI for the UK NeI |
Organisation | Jisc |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | PI of RCUK pilot project for AAAI |
Collaborator Contribution | Software development and testing at 8 UK HEIs and ROs |
Impact | SAFE+ASSET AAAI service |
Start Year | 2016 |
Description | DiRAC Intel Parallel Computing Centres |
Organisation | Intel Corporation |
Department | INTEL Research |
Country | United States |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Organised dicussions which lead to the setting up of 3 INTEL Parallel Computing Centres, at Durham, Edinburgh and Cambridge. Co-ordinated bids and held pre-application discussions with INTEL and the three HEIs to ensure INTEL buy-in to the proposed projects |
Collaborator Contribution | Awards of £450k to fund 3 programmers for 2 years to i) build maths libraries for the KNL processor, (ii) build fine grain parallel job management libraries to mitigate the load balancing issue for weak balancing codes and (iii) develop heterogeneous architectures for data intensive problems |
Impact | multi-disciplinary In progress |
Start Year | 2014 |
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 |
Title | Collaboration with Atempo |
Description | Tape to Tape data transfter between DiRAC sites. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | Proof of COncept that data could be read from Tape stores remotely via a remote file system |
Description | Member of UKRI E-Infrastructure Expert Panel 2017-2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Created 7 white papers for UKRI which detailed a Roadmap for future e-Infrastructure funding in the UK |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018,2019 |
Description | NeI Project Directors Group |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Reports on AAAI, Data E-Infrastructure, Using Cloud for Research The National NeI Survey 2014, 2015, 2016 Report on Gender in HPC BEIS e-Infrastructure Business Case Integration activities of the NeI |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015,2016,2017 |
URL | https://neipdg.ac.uk/ |