TRACS: Training and research on advanced computer systems

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 99.0027

Key words (English)

Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: ERBFMGECT950051

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 10.1 Stimulation of training and mobility

Short description (English)

See abstract

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Coordinator: Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (UK)

Abstract (English)

The Training and Research On Advanced Computing Systems (TRACS) is organized by the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center (EPCC) to train European students and young post-docs in the domain of High-Performance Computing (HPC). All visitors apply the gained knowledge to their own research project, using the leading-edge computing facilities and the expertise of EPCC.
The training courses covered basic HPC techniques, scientific data visualization and computational method courses. All courses were supplemented by practical execises on the EPCC High-Performance Computing facilities, like the Cray T3E-900 or the Sun HPC 3500.
As research project, the parallelisation of the Particle-Mesh code TRISTAN [1] was chosen. This code is used by the Radio Astronomy and Plasma Physics Group at ETH Zurich to investigate particle acceleration processes in the solar corona. In these computationally demanding simulations, a large collection of charged particles in their self- and mutually generated fields are tracked.
During this training visit, the code was parallelized based on message passing (MPI) and single processor code optimizations were performed. The execution time of the resulting implementation is up to 10 times faster on 8 processors of EPCC's Cray T3E-900 than the original sequential code on a single node. First results obtained with the parallel codes were visualized, illustrating particle migration accross the processors and fundamental plasma oscillations.

References:
[1] O. Buneman, 'TRISTAN The 3-D electromagnetic Particle Code', Computer Space Plasma Physics, H. Matsumoto and Y. Omura (Eds.), Terra Scientific Publishing Company, Tokyo, 1993.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 99.0027