If today's tech gets you down, remember supercomputers are still being used for scientific progress
(2022/12/11)
- Reference: 1670782329
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/12/11/doe_gluons_quarks/
- Source link:
The US Department of Energy this week laid out how it intends to put its supercomputing might to work simulating the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
The electrons, protons and neutrons that make up atoms, from which all matter is comprised, are fairly well understood. However the particles that make up those particles – leptons, quarks and bosons – remain mysterious, and the subject of ongoing scientific inquiry.
A $13 million grant from the Dept of Energy's Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program aims to expand our understanding of the extraordinarily tiny things that exist within the particles within atoms.
[1]
As far as scientists can tell, quarks and gluons — the stuff that holds them all together — can't be broken down any further. They are quite literally the fundamental building blocks of all matter. Remember of course that scientists once thought the same of atoms, so who knows where this might go.
[2]
[3]
The initiative will enlist several DoE facilities – including Jefferson, Argonne, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley, and Los Alamos National Labs, which will collaborate with MIT and William & Mary – to advance the supercomputing methods used to simulate quark and gluon behavior within protons.
The program seeks to answer some big questions about the nature of matter in the universe, such as “what is the origin of mass in matter? What is the origin of spin in matter,“ Robert Edwards, deputy group leader for the Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics at Jefferson Labs, told The Register .
[4]DoE digs up molten salt nuclear reactor tech, taps Los Alamos to lead the way back
[5]DoE supercomputing centers get $1.5B boost from Biden administration
[6]Utility security is so bad, US DoE offers rate cuts to improve it
[7]Aurora delays keep Frontier supercomputer in #1 spot on Top500
Today, physicists use supercomputers to generate a "snapshot" of the environment inside a proton, and use mathematics to add quarks and gluons to the mix to see how they interact. These simulations are repeated thousands of times over and then averaged to predict how these elemental particles behave in the real world.
This project, led by the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, encompasses four phases which aim to streamline and accelerate these simulations.
[8]
The first two phases will involve optimizing the software used to model quantum chromodynamics – the theory governing photons and neutrons – to break up the calculations into smaller chunks, and take better advantage of the even greater degrees of parallelism available on next-gen supercomputers.
One of the challenges Edwards and his team are working through now is how to take advantage of the growing floating-point capabilities of GPUs without running into connectivity bottlenecks when scaling them up.
“A good chunk of our efforts have been trying to find communication-avoiding algorithms and to lower the amount of communication that has to come off the nodes,” he said.
A good chunk of our efforts have been trying to find communication-avoiding algorithms
The team is also looking at applying machine-learning principles to parameterize the probability distributions at the heart of these simulations. According to Edwards, this has the potential to dramatically speed up simulation times and also helps to eliminate many of the bottlenecks around node-to-note communications.
“If we could scale it, this is like the Holy Grail for us,” he said.
[9]
In addition to using existing models, the third phase of the project will involve the development of new methods for modeling the interaction of quarks and gluons within a computer-generated universe. The final phase will take information collected by these efforts and use them to begin scaling up systems for deployment on next-gen supercomputers.
According to Edwards, the findings from this research also have practical applications for adjacent research, such as Jefferson Lab's continuous electron beam accelerator or Brookhaven Lab's relativistic heavy-ion collider – two of the instruments used to study quarks and gluons.
"Many of the problems that we are trying to address now, such as code infrastructures and methodology, will impact the [electron-ion collider]," he explained.
The DoE's interest in optimizing its models to take advantage of larger and more powerful supercomputers comes as the agency [10]receives a $1.5 billion check from the Biden administration to upgrade its computational capabilities. ®
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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/11/nuclear_molten_salt/
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[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/07/doe_supercomputering_grant/
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The electrons, protons and neutrons that make up atoms, from which all matter is comprised, are fairly well understood. However the particles that make up those particles – leptons, quarks and bosons – remain mysterious, and the subject of ongoing scientific inquiry.
A $13 million grant from the Dept of Energy's Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program aims to expand our understanding of the extraordinarily tiny things that exist within the particles within atoms.
[1]
As far as scientists can tell, quarks and gluons — the stuff that holds them all together — can't be broken down any further. They are quite literally the fundamental building blocks of all matter. Remember of course that scientists once thought the same of atoms, so who knows where this might go.
[2]
[3]
The initiative will enlist several DoE facilities – including Jefferson, Argonne, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley, and Los Alamos National Labs, which will collaborate with MIT and William & Mary – to advance the supercomputing methods used to simulate quark and gluon behavior within protons.
The program seeks to answer some big questions about the nature of matter in the universe, such as “what is the origin of mass in matter? What is the origin of spin in matter,“ Robert Edwards, deputy group leader for the Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics at Jefferson Labs, told The Register .
[4]DoE digs up molten salt nuclear reactor tech, taps Los Alamos to lead the way back
[5]DoE supercomputing centers get $1.5B boost from Biden administration
[6]Utility security is so bad, US DoE offers rate cuts to improve it
[7]Aurora delays keep Frontier supercomputer in #1 spot on Top500
Today, physicists use supercomputers to generate a "snapshot" of the environment inside a proton, and use mathematics to add quarks and gluons to the mix to see how they interact. These simulations are repeated thousands of times over and then averaged to predict how these elemental particles behave in the real world.
This project, led by the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, encompasses four phases which aim to streamline and accelerate these simulations.
[8]
The first two phases will involve optimizing the software used to model quantum chromodynamics – the theory governing photons and neutrons – to break up the calculations into smaller chunks, and take better advantage of the even greater degrees of parallelism available on next-gen supercomputers.
One of the challenges Edwards and his team are working through now is how to take advantage of the growing floating-point capabilities of GPUs without running into connectivity bottlenecks when scaling them up.
“A good chunk of our efforts have been trying to find communication-avoiding algorithms and to lower the amount of communication that has to come off the nodes,” he said.
A good chunk of our efforts have been trying to find communication-avoiding algorithms
The team is also looking at applying machine-learning principles to parameterize the probability distributions at the heart of these simulations. According to Edwards, this has the potential to dramatically speed up simulation times and also helps to eliminate many of the bottlenecks around node-to-note communications.
“If we could scale it, this is like the Holy Grail for us,” he said.
[9]
In addition to using existing models, the third phase of the project will involve the development of new methods for modeling the interaction of quarks and gluons within a computer-generated universe. The final phase will take information collected by these efforts and use them to begin scaling up systems for deployment on next-gen supercomputers.
According to Edwards, the findings from this research also have practical applications for adjacent research, such as Jefferson Lab's continuous electron beam accelerator or Brookhaven Lab's relativistic heavy-ion collider – two of the instruments used to study quarks and gluons.
"Many of the problems that we are trying to address now, such as code infrastructures and methodology, will impact the [electron-ion collider]," he explained.
The DoE's interest in optimizing its models to take advantage of larger and more powerful supercomputers comes as the agency [10]receives a $1.5 billion check from the Biden administration to upgrade its computational capabilities. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/hpc&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y5ZhIaM6pUGVM3L4FQWKfgAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/11/nuclear_molten_salt/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/07/doe_supercomputering_grant/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/07/utility_security/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/frontier_top500_aurora/
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[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/07/doe_supercomputering_grant/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
How will this help?
AlanSh
As I understand it, a scientist proposes some theory and then they use some empirical experiment (e.g. the hadron collider) to prove their theory.
Simulation doesn't do that - you can create algorithms for anything you like - time travel, humans morphing to werewolves etc. - none of which is remotely true.
So, what am I missing?
Re: How will this help?
Paul Crawford
It is the same thing. You simulate what you think are the laws of physics at whatever scale and situation and see if they predict what you observe, and if that goes well you try to predict new stuff - and then you can turn up the hardon's to 11 and see if you find experimentally what the software predicted.
If you get a decent match then you have determined your theory is not wrong so far. You never really prove 'right' in anything other than maths, but if all of your predictions that are testable go well, you have a theory that is useful for predicting stuff within the region of tested hypothesis.
Re: How will this help?
Eclectic Man
Simulations can provide information for which experiments to conduct, and how to observe them.
I have a cousin who is or was working on an experiment concerning electrons and neutron (not running it, a helper as it were). He described it to me as trying to measure out how far an electron sticks out from the neutron.* Their experiment was not sensitive enough to detect this if the current theory is correct, so not sure if they were hoping to find anything. A 'null result' would be consistent with current theory.
*Almost certainly considerable 'dumbing down' for my pathetic mathematics PhD brain.
"As far as scientists can tell, quarks and gluons — the stuff that holds them all together — can't be broken down any further. They are quite literally the fundamental building blocks of all matter. Remember of course that scientists once thought the same of atoms, so who knows where this might go."
The Vermin only teaze and pinch / Their Foes superior by an Inch.
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea / Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite 'em, / And so proceed ad infinitum:
Thus ev'ry Poet, in his Kind / Is bit by him that comes behind
—Jonathan Swift, 1733