09-19-2018 | Otis Earl Messer II: Application Readiness for Modern HPC: Lessons Learned and Some Cautionary Tales

Topic: HPCI Speaker Series: “Application Readiness for Modern HPC: Lessons Learned and Some Cautionary Tales”

Speaker: Otis Earl Messer II, NIA Visitor

Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Location: NASA/LaRC, Building 2102, Reid 1

Time: 10:00am

Abstract: The Center for Application Acceleration Readiness (CAAR) is a collection of science teams, vendor partners, and tool developers that have been brought together by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to produce application codes capable of day-one scientific output when new GPU-based platforms (Titan, and now Summit) are put into production. CAAR also serves as a laboratory to establish a set of best practices for other application ports. I will describe some of the lessons that have been learned from the work performed on these 20 or so applications, and what we can expect for efforts like this as we approach the exascale in 2021-2022.

Bio: Bronson Messer is a Senior Scientist in the Scientific Computing and Theoretical Physics Groups at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is also a Joint Faculty Associate Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Tennessee. His primary research interests are related to the explosion mechanisms and phenomenology of supernovae (both thermonuclear and core-collapse), especially neutrino transport and signatures, and the use of proxy applications to measure and optimize the performance of HPC simulation codes. In addition, he has worked on methods for nuclear network calculations and the application of genetic algorithms to the analysis of galaxy merger simulations. He has previously served as the Director of Science for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and as the acting Group Leader for Scientific Computing. Prior to joining ORNL in 2005, Dr. Messer was a Research Associate in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, where he was Deputy Group Leader for Astrophysics in the ASC Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes.  Dr. Messer holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee, earning his PhD in physics in 2000.