GMD-NEC Research Co-operation in High Performance Computing
by Guy Lonsdale and Rolf Hempel
Over the last year, NEC Europe Ltd. has expanded, in both numbers
of research staff members and research activities, its C&C Research
Laboratory (CCRLE) at the GMD's TechnoPark in Sankt Augustin. From its
inception, CCRLE has been collaborating with the GMD Institute for Algorithms
and Scientific Computing: from research in parallel numerical simulation
to execution environments for the Cenju-3 parallel platform.
NEC Europe Ltd. established NEC's first European research laboratory,
CCRLE Sankt Augustin, in 1994 for research in parallel and high performance
computing. Through this laboratory, NEC is aiming to develop its relations
with various European research centres and institutions and to contribute
to the advance of scientific computation in Europe.
An important part of the activities at CCRLE involve direct collaborations
with GMD Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing:
Massively Parallel platform, Cenju-3
The 64-processor Cenju-3 installed at GMD is made available to research
groups at GMD and CCRLE and to the wider research community. Several projects
investigating the simulation of complex phenomena (for example, weather
prediction, turbulent flows around aircraft and in combustion processes)
on advanced computer architectures have used the Cenju-3 as a test and
development platform. Researchers at GMD have ported and extended the execution
environment, EASY, to improve the job scheduling.
The CLIC Library and Aerodynamic Simulation
The Communications Library for Industrial Codes (CLIC) was developed
by GMD Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing within the German
National project POPINDA. In the latter part of that project, they were
supported by CCRLE and the future development of CLIC will be carried out
by a joint GMD-NEC team. The CLIC library is an extremely large set of
routines which provides a high-level support for the parallel implementations
of codes such as the central, parallel German Aerospace CFD code FLOWer
(also produced by the POPINDA Consortium). Future joint activities between
GMD Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing, CCRLE and the German
Aerospace Research Establishment (Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Luft-
und Raumfahrt) are planned which will ensure that CLIC is able to continue
to provide the basis for the parallel FLOWer code.
Efficient Numerical Algorithms
The development of new and improved numerical algorithms underlies the
efficient exploitation of HPC systems. For more than a decade, GMD Institute
for Algorithms and Scientific Computing has been at the forefront of research
into fast numerical simulation using multilevel methods. Co-operative research
with CCRLE has recently focused on robust solution, with the integration
of Krylov-subspace techniques, and improved accuracy without loss of computational
efficiency.
Visualisation for Coupled Simulations
The ESPRIT project CISPAR Open Interface for Coupling of Industrial
Simulation Codes on Parallel Systems (http://www.pallas.de/pages/cispar.htm)
aims to enable the coupling of industrial codes for the simulation
of interacting phenomena (eg fluid-structure interaction in artificial
heart-valves or in torque converters). At the centre of the adopted approach
is the COCOLIB library, to be produced by GMD Institute for Algorithms
and Scientific Computing, which performs all communications tasks occurring
between the single simulation codes. In collaboration with GMD, CCRLE is
providing the project with the COCOVIS tool, which visualises the data
transfer within COCOLIB.
Other activities of CCRLE, Sankt Augustin, beyond the joint research
co-operations with GMD include the following:
- development of MPI-implementations for NEC platforms
- research into extensions to the HPF language (in part within a collaboration
with the ESPRIT project HPF+)
- applications and algorithms research, with a particular emphasis on
Computational Fluid Dynamics
- investigation of the application potential of the PC-SMP cluster, LAMP,
installed at CCRLE.
With the GMD Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems,
NEC has established a collaboration in a quite separate area with its C&C
Research Laboratory in Berlin. This laboratory is concerned with research
into network technology and multi-media communications platforms.
Please contact:
Rolf Hempel - C&C Research Laboratories, NEC Europe Ltd.
Tel: +49 2241 9252 95
E-mail: hempel@ccrl-nece.technopark.gmd.de
