Los Alamos offers three-dimensional theater, expert presentations at Supercomputing conference

Contact: Jim Danneskiold, jdanneskiold@lanl.gov, (505) 667-1640 (03-151)

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Nov. 18, 2003 -- Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers are playing key roles at the annual Supercomputing 2003 conference in Phoenix November 15-21.

The conference, known as SC2003, features a booth showcasing spectacular simulations from Los Alamos and its sister national laboratories, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia, a separate booth that features Los Alamos supercomputing achievements, and a wide variety of technical presentations, papers and panels.

Los Alamos is the home of Q, the second-fastest supercomputer in the world.

The simulation booth, Booth 3023, is sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing program, or ASCI. The ASCI booth will feature a three-dimensional theater set up by Los Alamos at which viewers can view stunning, 3-D simulations of biological, engineering and astrophysics research by Los Alamos and Sandia, recent massively parallel experiments at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore and multiphysics work at the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets.

The 10-foot by eight-foot screen at the ASCI booth is wall-driven by four graphics pipes in a Silicon Graphics Inc. Onyx4 UltimateVision system. A fifth pipe will be used to support a console, where the driver runs the demonstrations.

The projectors lighting each of the four panels of the wall can drive a 1280x1024 video display configuration at about 100 Hz in active stereo mode, with shutter glasses required to see proper stereo imaging. This compares with a typical console monitor that runs at about 1280x1024 at 72 Hz in mono mode. The entire screen space will have 2560x2048, or approximately five megapixels. More information on the 3D theater is available from Dave Modl at Los Alamos at digem@lanl.gov via electronic mail.

Los Alamos will have its own booth, Booth 221, featuring 19 computer and computational science exhibits. Laboratory staff will distribute open source software and information on computer science applications available for licensing. The booth also will serve as a center for technical announcements, recruiting for interested computer scientists and engineers and a center for Los Alamos staff attending the meeting.

Los Alamos' booth will feature exhibits on the Performance Architecture Lab, homeland defense applications, Science Appliance clustered supercomputing, Radiant networking, Production High Performance Computing, Visualization, the FireTech wildfire model (an R&D 100 winner in 2003), Scientific Simulation on Q, Parallel File Systems, Tools for High Performance Computing and Socio-technical Simulations.

"The goal of our booth is to show the broader community how Los Alamos uses supercomputing to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, reduce the global threat of weapons of mass destruction, and solve national problems in energy, environment, infrastructure and health security," said John Morrison, leader of Los Alamos' Computing, Communications and Networking Division.

Several Los Alamos researchers are featured in scheduled papers and panels. These include:

November 16

Tutorial: A practical approach to performance analysis and modeling of large-scale systems; Adolfy Hoisie Darren James Kerbyson.

8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m., room 40

November 19

Paper: Performance Analysis and Modeling; Adolfy Hoisie.

1:30 p.m. – 3 p.m., rooms 38-39

Paper: Optimizing 10-Gigabit Ethernet in Networks of Workstations, Clusters, and Grids: A Case Study; Wu-chun Feng, Justin (Gus) Hurwitz.

11 - 11:30 a.m., Rooms 36-37

Paper: Scalable Hardware-Based Multicast Trees; Fabrizio Petrini.

11:30 a.m. – Noon, rooms 36-37

Paper: The Case of the Missing Supercomputer Performance: Achieving Optimal Performance on the 8,192 Processors of ASCI Q; Fabrizio Petrini, Darren J. Kerbyson, Scott Pakin.

1:30 – 2 p.m., rooms 38-39

November 20

Birds of a Feather Panel: Practical Supercomputing; Wu-Chun Feng.

Noon-1 p.m., rooms 42-43

Panel: High Performance Computing System Performance Modeling; Adolfy Hoisie.

3:30 – 5 p.m., rooms 42-43.

Panel: Battle of the Network Stars! Wu Feng, Fabrizio Petrini.

8:30 – 10 a.m., rooms 36-37

November 21

Panel: Open Source Software Policy Issues for High Performance Computing; Rod Oldehoeft .

10:30 a.m. – Noon, rooms 40-41

In addition, Los Alamos' Harvey Wasserman is serving as chair of the Tutorial Committee at the conference. Denny Rice (CCN-5) is volunteering to help run SCinet, the state-of-art, on-site network designed and built especially for the annual supercomputing conference. SciNet permits real-time demonstrations, communications and collaboration for applications developers, access to major national networks and testbeds, and a virtual conference capability with international participants.

SC Global, which debuted at SC2001, will provide interactive access to audiences around the world, with Los Alamos participating as a satellite site. Links to the events that will be presented via the Access Grid are available at http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/global.html online.

The Advanced Simulation and Computing Program, historically referred to as ASCI, is the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) collaborative program among Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia national laboratories to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.

ASCI was established in 1995 to help shift from test-based confidence to simulation-based confidence. Its mission is to analyze and predict the performance, safety, and reliability of nuclear weapons and certify their functionality. The tri-Lab collaborators also work in partnership with computer manufacturers and in alliance with five of the nation's major universities.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.

Los Alamos develops and applies science and technology to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent; reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and terrorism; and solve national problems in defense, energy, environment and infrastructure.

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