About | HPC2

About | HPC2
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About the HPC²
Contact Information
History of the High Performance Computing Collaboratory
Lineage
The High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC²) at Mississippi State University originated in 1990 as the NSF
Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Computational Field Simulation at MSU, which focused directly on the application
of high performance computing (HPC) for computational field simulation of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, and
structural mechanics for applications to aircraft, spacecraft, ships, automobiles, environmental, ocean, and biological
flow problems. Initially funded by the NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) Program in 1990 -- one of three NSF ERCs
funded that year out of 48 proposals - this ERC was the only one of the NSF ERCs with its focus directly on high
performance computing (HPC). Over the 11-year life cycle that NSF ERCs have, the Center increased its annual funding
by an order of magnitude, graduating from the NSF ERC program in 2001 and now continuing as a self-sufficient research
center with funding from a range of federal agencies and industry. The NSF ERC at MSU was cited by the NSF Director
in the January 1999 issue of
ASEE Prism
as a prime example of a successful NSF ERC, noting that the NSF ERC at
MSU "effectively demonstrates that you can institute change in a very positive way".
MSU's successful proposal in the highly competitive NSF ERC Program was enabled by strategic directions taken earlier
in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at MSU to place emphasis on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research and
in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering to emphasize microelectronics research. CFD research in the
ASE Department attained national recognition in the 1980s, and joined with established microelectronics research in
the ECE Department in a DARPA-funded research effort to tailor HPC for CFD applications. This cross-disciplinary effort
provided the foundation for the successful NSF ERC proposal that was submitted in 1989.
The intent of the NSF ERC Program is to change the culture of the university in the direction of multidisciplinary
research and collaboration, and the NSF ERC at MSU has indeed brought major change to MSU, establishing a pattern of
cross-disciplinary research effort - an acceptance of such effort as the norm - that has positioned the University
for other major opportunities. The NSF ERC also established a new multidisciplinary graduate program in Computational
Engineering cutting across engineering, computer science, and mathematics that allows entry from any field of
engineering or even from the physical and life sciences.
The impact of the NSF ERC on undergraduate education at MSU also has been significant, not only in the enhancement
of course offerings through new faculty, new technology, and new course content, but also through the research
experiences provided for undergraduate students and the student jobs involving directly relevant work experience.
Nearly 600 undergraduate students, and about that many graduate students, have shared in the NSF ERC cross-disciplinary
experience.
In addition to research efforts over the years, the NSF ERC constructed an interactive computer simulation display
entitled "How Wings Work" for the "How Things Fly" gallery in the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian
Institution on the Mall in Washington DC. And the NSF ERC designed the logo and handled all the graphics for
Supercomputing'94
held in Washington DC in 1994. Working with the Department of Art and the School of
Architecture at MSU, the NSF ERC facilitated the new graduate degrees in animation and electronic visualization
(MFA in Art) and in electronic design (MS in Architecture).
The NSF ERC for Computational Field Simulation
As created in the NSF ERC Program, the NSF ERC for Computational Field Simulation at MSU was a multidisciplinary
academic research center conducting a coordinated research program according to a strategic plan to advance the
U.S. capability in the use of computational simulation in engineering analysis and design, as well as in scientific
research in general. This NSF ERC focused on all elements involved in the computational simulation of physical
field phenomena - physical processes occurring over space and time, i.e. governed by partial differential equations:
computationally intense simulations requiring access and efficient utilization of HPC facilities at the highest
level, and requiring distributed graphics at the highest level for effective collaboration with other centers of
effort.
The NSF ERC incorporated engineers, physicists, computer scientists, and mathematicians in cross-disciplinary
research in geometrical representation,numerical solutions, and scientific visualization -- together with the
underlying parallel computing environments and mathematical foundations. Although the Center's historical
concentration was in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), its strategic research efforts in building computational
problem solving environments encompassed all areas of field physics. The Center's effort in CFD spanned the gamut
from high-speed aircraft to ships and submarines to ocean modeling and on to biological systems.
As an NSF ERC, the ERC for Computational Field Simulation at Mississippi State had the mission of interacting
with industry and federal labs in research of importance to economic competitiveness and national security. The
specific mission of this NSF ERC was to develop high-level capability for computational field simulation of physical
problems for application in analysis and design. That mission was approached through research thrusts in five areas:
grid generation, solution algorithms, scientific visualization, system software, and computer architecture -
mounting an integrated research program in both software and hardware.
A computational field simulation system requires geometrical representation, numerical solutions, and scientific
visualization operating in a coordinated environment making efficient and effective use of parallel computing
platforms friendly to the user. The NSF ERC strategically addressed all these elements in such combination and
with an applications focus.
This NSF ERC built and expanded on established nationally recognized research effort in grid generation at
Mississippi State (recognized by the1992 AIAA Aerodynamics Award), and made major advances in unstructured
grid generation, as well as in its traditional area of block-structured grid generation. The NSF ERC produced
the comprehensive
Handbook of Grid Generation
published by CRC Press in 1999.
The NSF ERC's long-standing nationally-recognized research effort in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), with
real-world applications on complex engineering problems using both block-structured and unstructured grids,
positioned the Center to immediately bring state-of-the-art CFD capability to bear in collaboration with other
universities through this connection. This CFD effort of the NSF ERC was specifically cited by the Navy for
on-time delivery, has provided the basis of turbomachinery simulation capability made available to industry by
NASA, and was a major component of the Navy maneuvering submarine simulation effort. This established concerted
capability in geometry/solution/visualization applications served well for expansion into all areas of field
physics through collaborations with other universities.
In the parallel computing environment area, the NSF ERC was a leader in the development and deployment of the
Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard enabling distributed computing, and the adoption of the Center's
implementation of MPI by several HPC hardware vendors was noted in
HPCwire
. The Center also co-authored a
primary text on MPI.
Original Mission
The
fields
addressed by the Center are simply regions or volumes of space within which physical phenomena
vary with position and time. These physical phenomena impact our lives much more than we generally realize: Common
examples of these phenomena include compressible fluid flow, such as the air flow around aircraft and automobiles;
incompressible fluid flow, such as the flow of water past ships; and electromagnetic (EM) fields, such as microwave
signal transmission or local EM fields around power lines. Historically, extensive experiments and costly equipment,
such as wind tunnels, were necessary to study these phenomena; however, they can now be simulated using modern
powerful computing systems and computational techniques. This use of field simulations has become a powerful tool
to supplement and/or replace traditional experimental and analytical methods. In some instances, simulation is
the only approach for understanding immeasurable physical phenomena or analyzing particular designs under certain
conditions.
The primary obstacle to widespread use of
computational field simulation (CFS)
by industry has been that
industry's design-related field problems are usually quite complex, requiring simulations that are time-consuming
and costly. The NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Computational Field Simulation at Mississippi State
University was created in 1990 with the mission to research the means and methods to reduce the time and cost
while increasing the fidelity and scope of complex field simulations for engineering analysis and design. When
the ERC was created, complete real-world problems were impractical to simulate on that generation of supercomputers.
Capturing the complex geometry of a complete aircraft and creating the discrete small-volumes in the regions for
field computations could easily have taken 6-12 months with extensive engineering efforts. Since the field
computations for the total 3-D problem could easily have required another 6-12 months on a $20 million supercomputer,
the complete problems were too expensive for practical simulations.
The Center currently conducts coordinated cross-disciplinary research (which amounts to approximately $12 million
per year) interacting with 16 industrial affiliates and 14 government affiliates. The Center's vision is to enable
for U.S. industry and government agencies superior capabilities for computational field simulations of large-scale
geometrically complex physical field problems through domain-specific integrated simulation environments for rapid
analysis and design, facilitating a shift from physical prototyping towards computational simulation prototyping.
The research in the ERC focuses on the underlying science of CFS and the development of means and methodologies to
enable the necessary reduction in engineering time, clock time, and overall cost of CFS for application domains,
including extensions into diverse, very complex multidisciplinary applications, that are relevant to industry. A
major emphasis of the Center--which employs 70 faculty and staff researchers and approximately 125 students from
various disciplines in engineering, science, and mathematics--has been in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to
provide the means to simulate complete real world applications (such as cruise missiles, complete submarines with
rotating propulsors, biofluid flow with particulates, rocket exhaust, and weapon or stage separation). However,
the Center's strategic research efforts in building computational problem-solving environments encompass all areas
of field physics.
The fulfillment of the Center's mission is illustrated by the John Glenn space shuttle flight. The Center has
significantly contributed to the art and practice of "unstructured grid generation", yielding high quality grids
in significantly less time. Whereas "structured grid generation" on a total aircraft may take several weeks or
months, the Center's unstructured grid generation can be accomplished within a day. The Center focused a team on
coupling its structured grid CFD algorithm knowledge within a portable, scalable computational architecture onto
unstructured grid solver technology. This required substantial research in both boundary layer gridding and
solution algorithms. As it turned out, the parallel solver (research) code had just been assembled for the first
time when the Space Shuttle mission STS-95 was launched. NASA Johnson Space Center called seeking simulated
analysis of the Space Shuttle Orbiter during the return flight after the Orbiter drag chute door was lost during
main engine startup. [The NASA engineers wanted to know the dynamic pressure in the region of the missing chute
door in order to estimate the aerodynamic loadings during reentry.] The ERC group read a previously supplied Space
Shuttle Orbiter geometry into the ERC's integrated simulation environment (SOLSTICE) and created the grids within
hours. Initial simulation results were computed on a high performance computer within two days. The significance
of this endeavor was not that NASA actually needed the results for successful reentry, but rather that the ERC had
been able to take a tough real world problem and compute the solutions in two to three days after receiving the
geometry description. [The turnaround time could have been reduced to a day if the ERC's main high-performance
computer was dedicated solely to this task (only 1/4 of the machine was actually used)]. This demonstrated an
achievement that was a direct result of the ERC's mission and efforts. Our researchers have demonstrated superior
ability to simulate very complex real world problems with complex geometries in relative motion. These
accomplishments have come from directed cross-disciplinary efforts involving various technologies: grid generation,
field solution algorithms, and scientific visualization, coupled with computer and computational engineering.
Without the ERC structure, we could not have combined all of the various talents and technologies required.
The simulation of field phenomena is historically divided into three phases: grid generation (i.e., capturing a
representation of the geometry and field regions and then constructing a grid that divides these regions into
many separate or discrete small volumes); the use of solution algorithms to solve discrete approximations for the
equations which govern the physical phenomena (constitutive equation modeling) to obtain values for the physical
solution at each point in space and time; and scientific visualization (i.e., displaying the geometry and/or
solution on a computer screen). Further, the computational capability itself is enabled by the computing system,
including the system software, which creates the application programming support environment, and the computer
architecture, which incorporates the hardware features and constraints.
In addition to the achievements in unstructured grid generation, the ERC researchers pioneered the development
of structured grid generation and techniques based on the parametric-based nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS)
representation. These technologies are incorporated into the block-structured grid and unstructured grid tools:
generalized unstructured multi-block GUM-B and HyperMesh, respectively.
The ERC originated, released, and supported a code to simulate turbomachinery-related flows--a code that has become
the
defacto
standard for turbomachinery manufacturers which are served by NASA Lewis Research Center (Allied
Signal, Allison, General Electric, and Pratt & Whitney). Algorithms enabling simulations for a fully configured
submarine or surface ship, including rotating propulsors have also significantly advanced the state-of-the-art with
the Navy selecting the codes for technology transfer to the shipyards. Other examples of application-enabling
research include (1) capabilities for free-surface (air/water) boundaries (e.g., ships and littoral water
oceanography with actual geometry, temperature, and salinity), (2) both chemical and thermal nonequilibrium flow
(e.g., the Space Shuttle main engine nozzle starting transient; the Titan Centaur booster and separation for
Lockheed Martin; an environmental quality network model for underground pollution; a fully two-dimensional radiative
heat transfer model; a portable, scalable solver for arbitrary mixtures of thermally perfect gases in local chemical
equilibrium; and preconditioning algorithms for low-speed combustion applications), and (3) particle-laden biofluid
flows (e.g., first ever oscillating flow in a pulmonary bifurcation section, inhaled aerosols through branching,
lung-like tubes; and powder-carrying air jets for industrial coating processes). These efforts clearly demonstrate
the ERC’s expertise in creating efficient means to simulate fluid flow through moving complex geometries with
complex physical phenomena. The scope of CFS capabilities is being extended across new single and multidisciplinary
domains.
In scientific visualization the ERC has contributed by (1) advancing the technology in visualizing time-varying data
through the release of ISTV in February 1996 and by (2) demonstrating at
SuperComputing '95
the ability to
steer and visualize a running ocean model in a multiperson immersive environment. Current research encompasses
feature detection, multiresolution visualization, data compression, distributed visualization, flow visualization,
and interactive virtual environments, exemplified by the recent installation of a CAVE.
A close association between computing and field simulation researchers within the Center has resulted in efficient
parallel CFS algorithms. Simulations of both compressible and incompressible flows have been researched to develop
effective solution methodologies and programming environments for creating portable parallel simulation programs
for use with the evolving computer architectures. The ERC has been a leader in the emergence of the Message Passing
Interface (MPI) as the standard paradigm for writing distributed (parallel) applications, enabling programs to be
portable across a wide range of distributed computing platforms. (MPI parallel applications can be ported across
shared or distributed memory architectures "transparently" while exploiting the low latency of shared memory.) A
significant event in technology transfer has been the collaboration with computer companies to expedite deployment
of MPI software on various platforms.
The Center is actively involved in evolving a testbed CFS integrated system, incorporating the various elements in
an effective and user-oriented system and focused on next generation computational simulations. The CFS testbed
provides for capability demonstrations, a modular framework for technology advancements and maintenance, efficient
reuse across physics domains, vehicles for technology transfer, and tools for CFS instruction. Targeted for
collaborative use, the integrated system testbed provides the foundation for creating domain-specific versions,
such as an integrated simulation system for littoral waters, for affiliates. Technology transfer is facilitated
through collaborative research activities, focusing on the particular customer and industrial needs. Current ERC
research is leading to addition of the integration of measurements and to the addition of multidisciplinary
simulations to the capability of the simulation testbed.
As part of its education mission, the ERC has had approximately 700 students directly involved in the research of
the Center, has developed a cross-disciplinary computational engineering graduate program to allow students to
integrate their study with the research of the Center, has developed graduate and undergraduate CFS courses for
engineering students and others, and has developed a minor in computational engineering for undergraduate engineering
students. Working with the Department of Art and the School of Architecture, the ERC facilitated the new graduate
degrees in animation and electronic visualization (MS in art) and in electronic design (MS in architecture). The
ERC has programs with minority and women’s institutions and works with K-12 schools.
HPC² Facilities
The HPC² facilities include two buildings, the Malcom A. Portera High Performance Computing Center (HPCC)
and the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) buildings, within the
Thad Cochran Research, Technology, and Economic
Development Park
adjacent to the Mississippi State University campus in Starkville, Mississippi, and the
MSU Science and Technology Center (STC) building at the NASA John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) near Bay St.
Louis, Mississippi.
The HPCC building is a 71,000 square foot facility designed in an open manner to facilitate
multi-disciplinary interactions and houses the organization's primary data center. The CAVS building is a
57,000 square foot facility consisting of numerous office suites, experimental laboratories housing an extensive
array of equipment in support of materials, advanced power systems, and human factors research activities, as
well as a small data center. The STC building at the NASA SSC is a 38,000 square foot facility consisting of
office space, classroom space, and a data center. Additionally, the CAVS organization occupies a 24,000 square
foot building near the Nissan manufacturing facility in Canton, MS to support Mississippi and national industries.
Travel Information
Located in the
Thad Cochran Research, Technology,
and Economic Development Park
adjacent to the
Mississippi State University
campus in
Starkville, Mississippi
the HPC² is in a region ripe with wildlife, southern hospitality, tradition and multicultural opportunity.
Located within reasonable traveling distances from Jackson, MS; Birmingham, AL; Memphis, TN, New Orleans, LA;
Atlanta, GA and the Gulf Coast, Starkville offers small town atmosphere with big town neighbors. Additional
information about Starkville and the surrounding area is available on the
Greater Starkville Development Partnership
website.
Air Travel
The
Golden Triangle Regional (GTR)
airport, just 15
minutes from Mississippi State University, serves Starkville and Northeast Mississippi with airline
service to world-wide destinations through Atlanta or Memphis via Delta Air Lines. Rental car service
is available from Avis, Hertz, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Taxi and limousine services are also available.
The
Starkville Bryan (STF)
airport provides easy access to the Starkville area for those traveling via general aviation aircraft.
Lodging
Starkville offers a variety of lodging options, ranging from the national hotel chains, to the personalized
service of local hotels, to the charm of bed and breakfasts. You will find a comprehensive list of area
accommodations at GSDP's
Where to Stay
web page.
Dining
From down-home cooking and mouth-watering barbecue, to fine dining and exotic cuisine, Starkville's unique
restaurants
are sure to please a variety of palates.
Maps
The main HPC² and CAVS facilities are located in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology, and Economic
Development Park on the north side of the Mississippi State University campus.
State overview with local focus
Thad Cochran Research, Technology, and Economic Development Park
Mississippi State University campus
Starkville area