Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research » Archive of 'Mar, 2008'
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Caltech One of Five Centers of Excellence for Predictive Science

Posted in News by admin
March 18, 2008
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With a $17 million grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the California Institute of Technology becomes one of five new centers of excellence that will focus on the emerging field of predictive science. Predictive science is the application of verified and validated computational simulations to predict the behavior of complex systems where routine experiments are not feasible. The research effort, which involves Caltech and four other selected PSAAP centers, will focus on unclassified applications of interest to NNSA and its three national laboratories: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.

Michael Ortiz, the Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics, professor of mechanical engineering, and director of Caltech’s new Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP) Center, says Caltech will focus its efforts on the high-energy density dynamic response of materials, with demonstrations of hypervelocity impact response.

Hypervelocity impact is central to a number of scientific and application areas, including the design of protective shields for space structures and the understanding of meteorite impact cratering. Accurate computer simulation is critical to the understanding of experiments that involve velocities reaching 10 kilometers per second, pressures in the megabar range, and extraordinarily high temperatures and deformation rates.

The executive director of Caltech’s PSAAP Center is Mark Stalzer, executive director of Caltech’s Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR). The PSAAP Center will coordinate activities in areas including computational fluid dynamics, led by Dan Meiron, the Jones Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Computer Science; computational science and engineering, led by CACR’s principal computational scientist, Michael Aivazis; experimental science, led by Rosakis; solid dynamics and materials, led by Ortiz; and uncertainty quantification, led by Houman Owhadi, assistant professor of applied and computational mathematics and control and dynamical systems.

> Read more at the Caltech Press Release or the original NNSA release

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High-Speed Data Transfer System Garners Outreach Award

Posted in News by admin
March 8, 2008
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The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) has rewarded researchers at the California Institute of Technology for better connecting physicists worldwide. Lead project scientist Harvey Newman, professor of physics at Caltech, Julian Bunn of the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research, and their international team of researchers will receive a trophy for Innovations in Networking at a ceremony in Oakland, California, on March 11.

Based on exciting recent developments, the Caltech award is for the project called UltraLight, Bunn says. UltraLight was developed in 2004 in large part to support the decades of research that will emerge from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The project provides advanced global systems and networks, and this summer will start transferring data as the LHC becomes operational.

UltraLight exhibited its capabilities in a showroom demonstration for CENIC during a supercomputing conference in November 2007, sustaining disk-to-disk data transfers of up to 88 gigabits per second (Gbps) between Caltech and Reno, Nevada, for more than a day. But data flows from the LHC experiments will be the first time that UltraLight will strut its stuff for scientists hungry for data.

The CENIC Innovations in Networking awards are split into four categories, and this year for the first time CENIC declared a tie in Experimental/Developmental Applications between UltraLight and another contender, CineGrid, which facilitates the exchange of digital media over a network. Bunn will accept the trophy and present the group’s project at the CENIC 2008: Lightpath to the Stars conference in Oakland on Tuesday, March 11.

> Read more at the Caltech Press Release.