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
Kobayashi C
(2020)
Stellar migrations and metal flows - Chemical evolution of the thin disc of a simulated Milky Way analogous galaxy
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kobayashi C
(2020)
The Origin of Elements from Carbon to Uranium
in The Astrophysical Journal
Kobayashi C
(2020)
New Type Ia Supernova Yields and the Manganese and Nickel Problems in the Milky Way and Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
in The Astrophysical Journal
Koiwai T
(2022)
A first glimpse at the shell structure beyond 54Ca: Spectroscopy of 55K, 55Ca, and 57Ca
in Physics Letters B
Komissarov S
(2019)
Magnetic inhibition of centrifugal instability
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kong S
(2022)
Filament formation via collision-induced magnetic reconnection - formation of a star cluster
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Koponen J
(2022)
Properties of low-lying charmonia and bottomonia from lattice QCD + QED
in Suplemento de la Revista Mexicana de Física
Kordov Z
(2020)
Electromagnetic contribution to S - ? mixing using lattice QCD + QED
in Physical Review D
Koudmani S
(2022)
Two can play at that game: constraining the role of supernova and AGN feedback in dwarf galaxies with cosmological zoom-in simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
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
Kruijssen J
(2019)
The E-MOSAICS project: tracing galaxy formation and assembly with the age-metallicity distribution of globular clusters
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kukstas E
(2020)
Environment from cross-correlations: connecting hot gas and the quenching of galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kulkarni G
(2019)
Large Ly a opacity fluctuations and low CMB t in models of late reionization with large islands of neutral hydrogen extending to z < 5.5
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Lamberts A
(2022)
Constraining blazar heating with the 2 ? z ? 3 Lyman-a forest
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lang N
(2022)
Axial-Vector D_{1} Hadrons in D^{*}p Scattering from QCD.
in Physical review letters
Lawlor D
(2022)
Thermal Transitions in Dense Two-Colour QCD
in EPJ Web of Conferences
Le Saux A
(2022)
Two-dimensional simulations of solar-like models with artificially enhanced luminosity II. Impact on internal gravity waves
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lee E
(2022)
A multisimulation study of relativistic SZ temperature scalings in galaxy clusters and groups
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lee J
(2022)
Simulating Jellyfish Galaxies: A Case Study for a Gas-rich Dwarf Galaxy
in The Astrophysical Journal
Lee J
(2020)
Dual Effects of Ram Pressure on Star Formation in Multiphase Disk Galaxies with Strong Stellar Feedback
in The Astrophysical Journal
Leo M
(2020)
Constraining structure formation using EDGES
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Li B
(2020)
Measuring the baryon acoustic oscillation peak position with different galaxy selections
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Li Y
(2022)
Non-linear reconstruction of features in the primordial power spectrum from large-scale structure
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Liao S
(2019)
Ultra-diffuse galaxies in the Auriga simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Liow K
(2020)
The role of collision speed, cloud density, and turbulence in the formation of young massive clusters via cloud-cloud collisions
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Liu Y
(2019)
Ring structure in the MWC 480 disk revealed by ALMA
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lofthouse E
(2020)
MUSE Analysis of Gas around Galaxies (MAGG) - I: Survey design and the environment of a near pristine gas cloud at z ˜ 3.5
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lovell C
(2022)
A machine learning approach to mapping baryons on to dark matter haloes using the eagle and C-EAGLE simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lovell C
(2022)
An orientation bias in observations of submillimetre 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
Lovell M
(2019)
Simulating the Dark Matter Decay Signal from the Perseus Galaxy Cluster
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Lovell M
(2019)
The signal of decaying dark matter with hydrodynamical simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lovell M
(2020)
Toward a General Parameterization of the Warm Dark Matter Halo Mass Function
in The Astrophysical Journal
Lower S
(2020)
How Well Can We Measure the Stellar Mass of a Galaxy: The Impact of the Assumed Star Formation History Model in SED Fitting
in The Astrophysical Journal
Ludlow A
(2019)
Numerical convergence of simulations of galaxy formation: the abundance and internal structure of cold dark matter haloes
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lytle A
(2019)
$B_c$ spectroscopy using highly improved staggered quarks
Lytle A.
(2018)
Bc spectroscopy using highly improved staggered quarks
in Proceedings of Science
Lytle A.T.
(2018)
Quark mass determinations with the RI-SMOM scheme and HISQ action
in Proceedings of Science
MacFarlane B
(2019)
Observational signatures of outbursting protostars - I: From hydrodynamic simulations to observations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
MacFarlane B
(2019)
Observational signatures of outbursting protostars - II. Exploring a wide range of eruptive protostars
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Mahler G
(2019)
RELICS: Strong Lensing Analysis of MACS J0417.5-1154 and Predictions for Observing the Magnified High-redshift Universe with JWST
in The Astrophysical Journal
Mahmoud R
(2019)
Reverberation reveals the truncated disc in the hard state of GX 339-4
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
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
Malbrunot-Ettenauer S
(2022)
Nuclear Charge Radii of the Nickel Isotopes ^{58-68,70}Ni.
in Physical review letters
Maltman K
(2019)
Current Status of inclusive hadronic tau determinations of |V_us|
in SciPost Physics Proceedings
Mann A
(2022)
TESS Hunt for Young and Maturing Exoplanets (THYME). VI. An 11 Myr Giant Planet Transiting a Very-low-mass Star in Lower Centaurus Crux
in The Astronomical Journal
Mant B
(2019)
The infrared spectrum of PF 3 and analysis of rotational energy clustering effect
in Molecular Physics
Marolf D
(2019)
Phases of holographic Hawking radiation on spatially compact spacetimes
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Martin G
(2019)
The formation and evolution of low-surface-brightness galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Mason S
(2022)
Magnetoconvection in a rotating spherical shell in the presence of a uniform axial magnetic field
in Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics
| 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/ |