The Department of Energy launched the Exascale Computing Project in 2016 to mobilize hardware, software, and application integration efforts in preparation for exascale-class supercomputers, which are capable of at least a quintillion calculations per second. In the years since, the DOE has launched the nation’s exascale era with Oak Ridge National Lab’s Frontier system, which will soon be followed by Argonne National Lab’s Aurora and Livermore’s El Capitan.
Enter the concept of co-design, which emphasizes collaborative research and development across the DOE complex as well as with other stakeholders. Co-design activities integrate the work of scientists, code teams, software developers, and hardware vendors to establish standardized solutions to common challenges while anticipating next-generation computing environments. Among the ECP’s several co-design teams is the Center for Efficient Exascale Discretizations (CEED, pronounced “seed”), led by LLNL computational mathematician Tzanio Kolev. As the ECP’s mandate formally concludes this autumn, so too does CEED’s.
Although the center’s focus on improving high-order discretization algorithms is narrow, its impact is anything but. According to director Tzanio Kolev, CEED has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible with high-order methods. He states, “We’ve proven the value and benefits of these methods. The software we’ve developed advances research in the high-order ecosystem including meshing, discretization, solvers, and GPU portability.” Visit LLNL’s Computing website to read two new articles about CEED:
