Plenary talk on HPC at HTS workshop

Xavier Sáez.

Our researcher Xavier Sáez gave a plenary talk on “HPC for solving multi-physics problems” at the 6th International Workshop on Numerical Modelling of High-Temperature Superconductors (HTS) in Costa de Caparica, Portugal.

Xavier focused his speech on the importance of multi-physics simulations to capture all relevant phenomena to model and simulate complex systems, and the key role of High-Performance Computing (HPC) due to the high computing resources required in those simulations.

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World’s fastest supercomputer will boost fusion research

ORNL’s Summit Supercomputer (photo: Nvidia)

The Summit supercomputer hosted at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been announced as the fastest supercomputer in the world, according to the TOP500 List.

The IBM Summit system reached a speed of 122.3 petaflops on the High-Performance Linpack benchmark test—the software used to evaluate and rank supercomputers on the TOP500 list. At its theoretical peak, Summit is capable of 200 petaflops (double precision), or 200 quadrillion calculations per second, about eight times more performance than its predecessor Titan.

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On the modelling of neutron transport in a fusion reactor

Simulation of the neutron flux inside a fusion tokamak reactor building. The white area at the centre is occupied by the fusion reactor. Photo: iter.org

In the process of fusion energy production based hydrogen heavy isotopes deuterium and tritium as fuel, high-energy neutrons are released. These neutrons have many roles in a fusion reactor.

On one side, neutrons from the fusion reactions taking place in the fuel inside the reactor vacuum vessel generate the heat that, in a fusion plant, will initiate the electricity-producing process. Moreover, neutron interaction with lithium inside the machine will produce tritium.

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Divertor Tokamak Test Facility to be built in Italy

The Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) Facility will be built in Frascati, Rome, Italy, as has been announced by Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). It will be part of the International Center of Excellence for nuclear fusion research and will have a cost of 500 million euros.

This experimental machine will provide scientific and technological answers to some particularly complex problems of the fusion process (such as the management of very high temperatures) and stands as a “link” between ITER and DEMO international projects. Therefore DTT should operate integrating various aspects, with significant power loads, flexible divertors, plasma edge and bulk conditions approaching as much as possible those planned for DEMO, at least in terms of dimensionless parameters.

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Code Development at Integrated Fusion Modelling Code Camp at Poznan

Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PSNC), Poland.

From the 3rd to the 13th of April, our fusion group has participated in the Code Camp of the EUROfusion “Code Development for Integrated Modelling” (WPCD) Work Package at Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PSNC), Poznan, Poland.

WPCD develops generic and flexible sophisticated workflows for physics applications, aiming at providing a validated modular suite for the simulation of complete plasma discharges of any existing and future tokamak, including JET, JT-60SA, ITER and DEMO.

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Delivering HPC results to EUROfusion

On 12th April 2018, our Fusion group member Xavier Sáez visited the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Garching, Germany, to participate in the meeting of the EUROfusion High Level Support Team.

Xavier presented the completed work performed to improve the performance of FELTOR (Full-F ELectromagnetic code in TORoidal geometry), which is both a numerical library and a scientific software package built on top of it.

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