Simula and Inria join forces in high performance computing

28 February 2022
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 borrows the name of a marine 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 supercomputer hardware resources to their full extent will enable challenging scientific simulations that facilitate scientific and engineering advances. Meanwhile, continued research effort is needed to adapt scientific software to the fast-changing hardware landscape. Specifically, the associate team will utilize the world-renowned StarPU runtime system from Inria's STORM team to further improve 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 this associate team is to build on the synergy to extend the effectiveness of FEniCS 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 MAELSTROM associate team will be composed of 13 researchers, six from Inria's STORM team and seven from Simula's HPC department. The associate team will be jointly led by Research Scientist Olivier 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.
 

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