Simula and Inria join forces in high performance computing
Published:
The Department of High Performance Computing (HPC) at Simula and the STORM team at Inria have been granted status as an Inria Associate Team. This prestigious program is an instrument for stimulating close collaboration between Inria and carefully selected groups at other leading research institutions. The targeted research area of HPC for this associate team is also in full alignment with the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed between Inria and Simula in January 2021.
The name of the new associate team, MAELSTROM, which borrowsthe name of amarine channel and strong tidal current of the Norwegian Sea, is meant to reflect the power of HPC. Both sides of this associate team believe that exploiting supercomputerhardware resources to their full extent will enable challenging scientific simulations that facilitate scientific and engineering advances. Meanwhile, continued research effort is needed to adapt scientificsoftware to the fast-changing hardware landscape. Specifically, the associate team will utilize the world-renowned StarPUruntime system from Inria's STORM team to furtherimprove the performance of the widely used scientific computing platform FEniCS, of which Simula is one of the main developers. The research activities will address the runtime system, kernel generation and parameter optimization of FEniCS.
The two sides of the MAELSTROM associate team,Inria's STORM team and Simula's HPC department, have already a close collaboration through the ongoing, multi-partner EuroHPC project MICROCARD.The purpose of thisassociateteam is to build on the synergy to extend the effectiveness ofFEniCS on heterogeneous, accelerated supercomputers, while preserving its friendliness for scientific programmers, and to readily let a broad range of applications benefit from an effectivized and accelerated FEniCS.
The MAELSTROMassociateteam will be composed of 13 researchers, six from Inria's STORM team andseven from Simula's HPC department. The associate team will be jointly led by Research ScientistOlivier Aumage from Inria Bordeaux and Professor Xing Cai from Simula.
The National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria) is France’s leading computer science and applied mathematics research institute. With a headcount of around 3500 researchers and engineers, Inria is a European research powerhouse with a strong track record of excellence in basic research and applied industrial research.