The primary mission of the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program is to discover, develop, and deploy the computational and networking tools that enable researchers in the scientific disciplines to analyze, model, simulate, and predict complex phenomena important to the Department of Energy.

Delivering the Tools to Advance Understanding

Imagine...
 Simulating fusion energy reactions in a gas cloud six times hotter than the sun.
 Testing innovative energetic materials in a virtual environment.
 Modeling the properties of materials thousands of times smaller than a human hair.
 Computers revealing the functions of bacteria that consume environmental contaminants

The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) makes it happen.  The advanced computers and high-fidelity simulations it supports and develops give scientists the power to analyze theories and validate experiments that are dangerous, expensive or impossible to conduct.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science founded ASCR to develop the algorithms (mathematical rules and formulae), computer programs and hardware that advance scientific research.  As computer simulation and modeling firmly takes its place with theory and experiment as a vital tool for understanding, ASCR drives progress in nearly every scientific area DOE has identified as a strategic theme:

• Energy security – Computer simulation helps researchers understand combustion, develop fusion energy, improve fuel cells and discover other technologies important to ensuring America’s security through reliable, clean and affordable energy.
• Nuclear Security – High-performance computers let scientists simulate materials and designs important to the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent, a critical part of the strategy to ensure America’s nuclear security.  ASCR-supported science contributes research tools and insights the National Nuclear Security Agency can use as steward of the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
• Scientific Discovery and Innovation – ASCR research and facilities support the most powerful openly available computers and programs in the world, strengthening U.S. scientific discovery and economic competitiveness, and improving the quality of life through innovation.
• Environmental Responsibility – Computer simulations help scientists understand environmental contamination and develop cleanup technologies, helping protect the environment by resolving the ecological legacy of nuclear weapons production.

With ASCR support, scientists at DOE laboratories and at universities gain understanding of these and other issues at unprecedented scales of time and space – from nanoseconds to decades and from single atoms to global weather systems and supernovae.  The scope and precision of this work is hugely demanding.  Without powerful computers and precise programming, many simulations would take literally decades to run.  The Department of Energy has long recognized that development of high-performance computers, the networks to connect them and the software to run them is crucial to America’s research lead.

“Advanced computing will continue to be the third pillar of scientific research in the 21^st century,” DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond Orbach said.  “Major challenges exist in all Office of Science research programs that can be addressed by scientific supercomputing.”

Research Areas
Nearly everything ASCR supports is directed at improving high-performance computers and the simulations they run.  Much of its research focuses on three subjects:

Applied Mathematics – Applied mathematics researchers develop the inner workings of computer simulation – the methods that translate the physical world into language computers understand.  They analyze how models behave, optimize algorithms and explore codes to meet new challenges.  They make simulations more precise, fast and efficient – in one case, computer scientists and chemists merged components from ASCR-developed software packages to cut simulation runtime nearly in half.  ASCR also supports graduate fellowships and other educational programs to ensure a continued supply of experts in the field.  These efforts are crucial to provide the computing capability DOE and the Office of Science demand for research to protect our national and economic security.

Computer Science – ASCR supports the federal government’s largest and most active computer science research effort.  DOE researchers, as well as university researchers, suppliers and companies, have used system software and software tools it develops to capitalize on the capabilities of high-performance computers.  That allows researchers to simulate and predict complex physical, chemical and biological phenomena important to the Office of Science and DOE.  In one case, researchers improved programming to make a tenfold cut in the time needed to perform a complex calculation in a chemistry program scaled to a large number of processors.

Integrated Network Environments – DOE-sponsored research often tackles questions so large and complex that many institutions and researchers must collaborate on them.  Integrated network environments unite scientists with high-speed, secure systems and software.  These “collaboratories” remove geographic and time barriers, letting scientists from Maine to Alaska share unique facilities, large datasets and large-scale computing.  One test network being deployed transfers data thousands of times faster than traditional Internet connections – up to 20 gigabits per second.  Such networks will enable widespread use of the next generation of supercomputers, capable of up to one quadrillion calculations per second.  They accelerate discovery, making them essential to DOE’s mission.

Facilities
The Office of Science builds and operates facilities and instruments that give U.S. scientists a world-class research capacity.  ASCR provides that high-level computer power, focusing on large-scale installations used by scientists and engineers in many disciplines.  Facilities ASCR oversees include:

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) –Based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, NERSC is one of the world's largest resources devoted to providing high-performance computing resources and expertise needed for scientific discovery and innovation.  Its computers include a 19,3200-processor Cray XT4 supercomputer capable of more than 100 teraflops(100 trillions calculations per second) and upgradeable to 1 petaflops - one quadrillion calculations per second, or a 1 followed by 15 zeroes.  NERSC also provides its user community with three smaller high-performance computers and a high-performance storage system with a capacity to archive 22 petabytes of data - about three times the amount of information in the Library of Congress.  More than 2,900 scientists at DOE laboratories, universities and research organizations nationwide use NERSC computers to investigate combustion, climate change, fusion energy, astrophysics, biology, materials and other subjects.  The broad range of scientific disciplines illustrates the center's key role in achieving DOE's goal to advance science.

Leadership Computing Facility – Based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Computational Sciences in Tennessee and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, the facility’s goal is creating the nation’s most powerful computer capability for unclassified research.  At Oak Ridge, the facility’s high-performance computers include a Cray XT3 that will be upgraded from 50 teraflops to 250 teraflops peak capability.  Another machine capable of a maximum of 1 petaflops will be added.  Meanwhile, Argonne diversifies the architecture of DOE’s top computers by researching IBM machines, including a BlueGene/L capable of more than five teraflops peak performance.  The lab will add a BlueGene/P computer with 100 teraflops peak capability, to be upgraded to between 250 and 500 teraflops in 2008.  Besides providing critical capability data, Leadership Computing Facility machines run a small number of peer-reviewed, computationally intensive, high-impact research projects, including human genetic code studies, simulations to better understand the movement of subsurface contaminants, and supernovae models.  Leadership Computing Facility resources are vital to DOE research in basic energy sciences, biological and environmental sciences, fusion energy and high-energy and nuclear physics.  They are national resources for science that cannot be done anywhere else.

ESnet – The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) provides critical infrastructure for Office of Science programs, letting researchers at national laboratories, universities and other institutions communicate and collaborate on research in climate change, renewable energy and other areas.  It provides access to user facilities like particle accelerators, fusion reactors, high-performance computers and data repositories, making it essential for DOE’s science missions.  ESnet connects more than 30 DOE sites at speeds up to 20 gigabits per second, thousands of times faster than traditional Internet connections, with plans to double or quadruple that speed.

Cross-Cutting Projects
The Office of Science and ASCR have several additional efforts that capitalize on the complex and powerful computing resources that allow DOE to break new ground in science and reshape how science is done.  These programs cut across disciplines to use advanced computers to their best advantage and rapidly drive scientific discovery.  These special efforts include:

Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing – The SciDAC program was launched in 2001 to develop new tools and techniques for advancing scientific research through computational modeling and simulation in all mission areas within the Office of Science. SciDAC connects scientists from a wide variety of disciplines with applied mathematicians and computer scientists to develop tools for computer simulation, generating breakthroughs that were impossible using theoretical studies or laboratory experiments alone.  The program also supports Centers for Enabling Technologies – multidisciplinary teams at DOE national laboratories and universities that focus on the specific needs of SciDAC researchers as they move toward petascale computing.  Projects have improved climate simulations important to the Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research division, provided design tools for next-generation particle accelerators, and made vital contributions in materials sciences, chemistry and biological sciences.

Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment – INCITE allocates millions of processor hours on computers at NERSC, Oak Ridge, Argonne and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state.  In fact, a majority of Leadership Computing Facility resources will be allocated to INCITE projects, letting researchers address some of the most challenging problems in physics, chemistry, genetics and energy.  With thousands of hours on thousands of processors, researchers can create detailed simulations of things like combustion and fusion energy – goals of the Office of Science’s Basic Energy Sciences and Fusion Energy Sciences programs.  These computationally intensive, large-scale projects set the stage for major advances, but also encourage collaborations linking application scientists, such as physicists and biologists, with computer scientists and applied mathematicians.  Researchers from DOE laboratories, universities and industry have all benefited from INCITE.

Multiscale Mathematics Initiative – Scientists are developing a deeper understanding of nature over vast scales of time and space, from quadrillionths of a second for subatomic particles to billions of years for evolution of the universe.  However, these models generally portray systems at a single scale.  Their results often cannot be melded to gain a clear view of events.  For example, material breaks and fractures can be visible to the naked eye, yet can only be effectively comprehended and prevented by understanding how atoms behave.  The Multiscale Mathematics Initiative is designed to bridge these scales with fundamentally new mathematics and software.  It integrates models and provides deeper understanding of their interactions.  The research develops new high-fidelity simulations to address important Office of Science research, including fuel cell design, combustion, fusion energy and materials design.