Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe has announced an award of AUD 446,000 (US $474,000) by the Australian Research Council for a three-year linkage project with The Australian National University. The new project, entitled ‘Robust Numerical Solution of Partial Differential Equations on Petascale Computer Systems with Applications to Tsunami Modelling and Plasma Physics,’ is aimed at applying new mathematical ideas to exploit the computational power of the next generation of supercomputers. The objective is to develop new techniques and software that will be key enablers for the science needed to understand the workings of complex dynamical systems.
Commenting on behalf of Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe, team leader and partner investigator for Fujitsu, Dr Ross Nobes, explained the importance of the project: ‘We are extremely pleased to be working with The Australian National University to develop this crucial technology. The project forms a logical extension to the Fujitsu-sponsored Open Petascale Libraries global initiative launched last year. It will cover some important new ground – tackling the challenge of scalable, robust, fault-tolerant computer simulation, which will be of increasing importance as we head towards exascale computing.
‘We plan to use two key applications as the test beds for the research – tsunami modelling and plasma physics – and build on ANU’s expertise in advanced mathematical techniques including wavelets and high-dimensional approximations to deliver advanced mathematical software for petascale and future advanced supercomputers. As part of the project, we will be undertaking specific optimisations on state-of-the-art supercomputers with multi-core nodes and complex communication networks, including Fujitsu’s latest high-performance computing systems. We look forward to some exciting results over the three years of the project.’
The Australian National University team is led by Professor Markus Hegland of the Mathematical Sciences Institute, with Professor Richard Brent and associate Professor Stephen Roberts of the Mathematical Sciences Institute. Associate Professor Alistair Rendell and Dr Peter Strazdins of the Research School of Computer Science are contributing as chief investigators.
