An important force which has continued to drive HPC has been to focus on frontier milestones which consist in technical goals that symbolize the next stage of progress in the field. In the 1990s, the HPC community sought to achieve computing at a teraflop rate and currently we are able to compute on the first leading architectures at a petaflop rate. Generalist petaflop supercomputers are likely to be available in 2010-2012 and some communities are already in the early stages of thinking about what computing at the exaflop level would be like. For application codes to sustain a petaflop and more in the next few years, hundreds of thousands of processor cores or more will be needed, regardless of processor technology. Currently, a few HPC simulation codes easily scale to this regime, and major code development efforts are critical to achieve the potential of these new systems. Scaling to a petaflop and more will involve improving physical models, mathematical modelling, super scalable algorithms that will require paying particular attention to acquisition, management and visualization of huge amounts of scientific data.
In this context, the purpose of the HiePACS project is to perform efficiently frontier simulations arising from challenging research and industrial multiscale applications. The solution of these challenging problems requires a multidisciplinary approach involving applied mathematics, computational and computer sciences. In applied mathematics, it essentially involves advanced numerical schemes. In computational science, it involves massively parallel computing and the design of highly scalable algorithms and codes to be executed on future petaflop (and beyond) platforms. Through this approach, HiePACS intends to contribute to all steps going from the design of more scalable new high-performance, robust and more accurate numerical schemes to the optimized implementations of the associated algorithms and codes on very high performance supercomputers. In order to address these research challenges, some researchers of the former ScAlApplix INRIA Project-Team together with researchers of the Parallel Algorithms Project from CERFACS have joined HiePACS in the framework of the INRIA - CERFACS Joint Laboratory on High Performance Computing, HiePACS being the first Research Initiative of this Joint Laboratory.
Research Themes
In order to tackle these large scale scientific challenges the HiePACS research is organized as a continuum of research activities based on a multidisciplinary approach involving applied mathematics, computational and computer sciences. The research topics of HiePACS are the following.
Methodological and algorithmic research
- High performance computing on next generation architectures
- High performance solvers for linear algebra problems
- Hybrid direct/iterative solvers based on algebraic decomposition domain
- Hybrid solvers based on a combination of multigrid methods and of direct solvers
- Linear Krylov solvers
- Eigensolvers
- High performance Fast Multipole Method for N-body problems
- Algorithmics for code coupling in complex simulations
Frontier simulations arising from challenging research and industrial multiscale applications
- Material Physics
- Application customers of high performance linear algebra solvers
International and Industrial Relations
- International collaborations
- TU Brunswick (Germany)
- University of Minnesota (USA)
- Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)
- Industrial collaborations
- BRGM
- CEA (CESTA, Ile-de-France, SACLAY)
- EDF
- TOTAL
Members
| Research Scientist | |
|---|---|
 |
Jean Roman [INRIA, Team Leader, Senior Researcher (DR on secondment), Professor at IPB, HdR] |
 |
Emmanuel Agullo [INRIA, Junior Researcher (CR)] |
 |
Olivier Coulaud [INRIA, Senior Researcher (DR)] |
| Luc Giraud [INRIA, Senior Researcher (DR), HdR] | |
 |
Xavier Vasseur [CERFACS, ALGO Project, Senior Scientist] |
| Faculty Member | |
| Aurélien Esnard [University of Bordeaux, Associate Professor (MdC)] | |
| Abdou Guermouche [University of Bordeaux, Associate Professor (MdC)] | |
| External Collaborator | |
| Iain Duff [CERFACS, ALGO Project, Senior Scientist, HIEPACS Scientific Advisor] | |
| Pierre Fortin [Paris 6 University, LIP6, Assistant Professor (MdC)] | |
| Guillaume Latu [Strasbourg University, LSIIT, Assistant Professor (MdC), on secondment at CEA Cadarache] | |
| Technical Staff | |
| Mohamed Abdoul Asize [LaBRI, funding from ANR ARA CIS NOSSI, since Nov. 2010] | |
| Damien Genet [LaBRI, funding from ANR ARA CIS NOSSI, until Sep. 2010] | |
| Yohan Lee-Tin-Yien [INRIA, funding from ADT ParScaLi, since Dec. 2009] | |
| PhD Student | |
| Rached Abdelkhalek [TOTAL, CIFRE, since Jan. 2008] | |
| Mathieu Chanaud [INRIA, funding from INRIA and CEA, since Dec. 2007] | |
 |
Yohann Dudouit [CERFACS, funding from TOTAL, since Oct. 2010] |
| Fabrice Dupros [BRGM, funding from BRGM and ANR CIGC NUMASIS, since Feb. 2007] | |
 |
Pablo Salas Medina [INRIA, funding from Europe FP7/ITN (Marie Curie) MyPlanet, since Jun. 2010] |
| Jérôme Soumagne [CSCS, funding from Europe FP7/ICT/FET NextMuSE STREP since Apr. 2009] | |
| Clément Vuchener [University of Bordeaux, funding from French Research Ministry, since Sep. 2010] | |
| Post-Doctoral Fellow | |
| Mikko Byckling [CERFACS, ALGO Project, since Nov. 2010] | |
| Pavel Jiranek [CERFACS, ALGO Project, until Sep. 2010] | |
| Peter Koval [LaBRI, funding from ANR ARA CIS NOSSI, until Jul. 2010] | |
| Administrative Assistant | |
 |
Barta Beneddine [INRIA] |