Research and Academic

Success Stories - Research and Academic

Osaka University

The University of Osaka, besides other fields, does research in laser nuclear fusion, laser processing and high energy density science (HED). This is largely done by using laser light, electron, ion and neutron beams. In this process it is very important to run computational simulations of radiation hydrodynamics.

Newly developed numerical models typically have to be fully developed and tuned before they can be ported to the supercomputer. This is where the biggest advantage of the SX-Aurora TSUBASA tower model comes into play. The compact size of the machine allows it to be placed near the scientist's desk inside the laboratory. The code then can be tuned with less effort and transferred over to the supercomputer more easily.

The performance of the radiation hydrodynamics code is depends on the memory bandwidth, where the SX-Aurora TSUBASA provides market-leading advantage.

This allows a real-time simulation for data assimilation with respect to both the laser experimental data and the simulation data. This saves the university a lot of work and time they have to invest in code tuning and porting.

Waseda University

The Waseda Univeristy – Green Computing System Research and Development Center was founded to develop ultra-low power, high performance computers.

The university sees the SX-Aurora TSUBASA as a very promising technology for this given purpose. The objective is to use the SX-Aurora TSUBASA vector engine to speed up various applications and simultaneously reduce power consumption. This can be achieved by focusing on the research of Automatic Parallelizing Compilers.

As a result of a joint research the Waseda University was able to speed up a NAS Parallel Benchmark with CG program automatic parallelization and automatic vectorization on one single SX-Aurora TSUBASA core by a factor of 11 (from ~115sec to ~10sec). This was achieved by using the universities' own OSCAR compiler on a NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA A101-1 tower model.

Tokyo University

The Department of Information and Computer Technology at Tokyo University of Science specializes in Computational Fluid Dynamics. Dr. Eng Kozo Fujii has been doing research in the field of Aerospace applications for more than 40 years with the help of supercomputers. With large-scale simulations for complicated flow fields over an aircraft or estimations of rocket plume acoustics the reliability of payload satellites could be calculated.

Real-time simulations or transaction-type use of supercomputers will be needed in the near future as supercomputers will merge into our social life as they work behind the scene of our daily activities. NEC’s SX-Aurora TSUBASA is well-tailored for such a purpose as it allows it to try large-scale simulations right away without porting the code.

Tohoku University

Tohoku University’s Cyberscience Center has installed an inter-university joint-usage institute with state-of-the-art supercomputers. Besides other research fields Tohoku University is engaged in real-time simulations of heatstroke as well as in the development of a Tsunami inundation prediction system. As supercomputers are growing in efficiency and computing power, which in turn is becoming more easily accessible, it will become easier to contribute to predictions like these to ensure a safer and healthier society.

Supercomputers recently focus on higher peak performance, the NEC vector architecture give priority to both capabilities of arithmetic processing and data transfer. This is expected to lead to a well-balanced design regarding computing and data transfer.

University of Ulm

One of the research fields of the University of Ulm is quantum technology where the quantum physical phenomena in theory and experiment are investigated, which among other things leads to the development of new sensors. Another important aspect is energy conversion and storage to develop tomorrow’s powerful, reliable batteries and fuel cells.

With respect to the SX-Aurora TSUBASA technology some of the key codes showed how they benefit from vector processors. Also the focus on well-established programming models to enable the efficient use of the vector architecture has the potential to deliver better time to result for these codes as well as a better energy efficiency.