Switching to High Gear: Opportunities for Grand-scale Real-time Parallel Simulations

Abstract

The recent emergence of dramatically large computational power, spanning desktops with multi-core processors and multiple graphics cards to supercomputers with 10^5 processor cores, has suddenly resulted in simulation-based solutions trailing behind in the ability to fully tap the new computational capacity. Here, we motivate the need for switching the parallel simulation research to a higher gear to exploit the new, immense levels of computational power. The potential for grand-scale real-time solutions is illustrated using preliminary results from prototypes in four example application areas: (a) state- or regional-scale vehicular mobility modeling, (b) very large-scale epidemic modeling, (c) modeling the propagation of wireless network signals in very large, cluttered terrains, and, (d) country- or world-scale social behavioral modeling. We believe the stage is perfectly poised for the parallel/distributed simulation community to envision and formulate similar grand-scale, real-time simulation-based solutions in many application areas.

Publication
ACM International Symposium on Distributed Simulations and Real-time Applications (Keynote)

[Pub 99]

Kalyan Perumalla
Kalyan Perumalla

As a Federal Program Manager in Advanced Scientific Computing Research at the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science, Kalyan Perumalla manages a $100-million R&D portfolio covering AI, HPC, Quantum, SciDAC, and Basic Computer Science. In his 25-year R&D leadership experience, he previously led advanced R&D as Distinguished Research Staff Member at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) developing scalable software and applications on the world’s largest supercomputers for 17 years, including as a line manager and a founding group leader. He has held senior faculty and adjunct appointments at UTK, GT, and UNL, and was an IAS Fellow at Durham University.

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