The Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC) conference is a popular annual event for sharing the latest developments and findings in the field of computational sciences. Held each year in Switzerland, this year PASC will returned to Zurich under the theme Synthesizing Applications Through Learning and Computing. With a general focus in 2024 on the grand challenge of combining physics-based simulations with novel machine learning and AI based methods to address interdisciplinary problems in science, PASC always attracts a very wide ranging audience and is an excellent way in which traditionally disparate fields can connect. Hence it was an excellent venue for a variety of ExCALIBUR projects.
The ExaTEPP high priority use-case presented a poster Performance Characterisation of Software for Lattice Quantum Field Theory Beyond the Standard Model where moving beyond the standard model in Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) introduces additional degrees of freedom that significantly increase the complexity of software and the difficulty of writing performant, portable code. The poster presented an assessment of the performance of two suites of BSM-capable lattice software, HiRep and Grid, when applied to problems of current physical interest.
A major feature of PASC are the mini-symposia which are two hour focus sessions on specific topics. There were several sessions that ExCALIBUR projects were involved in, starting with the Interfacing Machine Learning with Physics-Based Models where the PAX-HPC project gave the talk Accelerating Materials Modelling with Machine Learning: Challenges and Opportunities and were also involved in the panel discussion towards the end of the session.
Several of the H&ES testbeds were involved in the Riding the Cambrian Explosion in Hardware for Scientific Computing mini-symposia which was organised by the CGRA testbed and chaired by Nick Brown. This session involved presentations on the Cerebras CS-2 by the PETSc on CS-2 H&ES testbed, a presentation on RISC-V by Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, and a presentation on AMD AI engines by one of the AMD University programme leads. These topics are important to the HPC community as future potential architectures, and in the ExCALIBUR H&ES programme we have been heavily involved in all of these technologies.
Kristy Pringle from Universe-HPC presented in the Ethical and Societal Considerations for Scientific Computing mini-symposia about work being undertaken in this ExCALIBUR project around ethical concerns related to HPC education and training. A packed session, this resulted in a valuable discussion and numerous points being explored and highlighted.
George Bisbas from the xDSL project presented work undertaken connecting the PSyclone and Devito DSLs together in a common DSL stack during the Motif-Based Automated Performance Engineering for HPC mini-symposia. His talk, A Shared Compilation Stack for HPC Stencil DSLs, was well received and was an opportunity for George to highlight a paper that had recently been accepted to ASPLOS24 which is one of the world leading conferences in the field.
Jemma Shipton from the parallel in time project also presented on their work in the Modern PDE Discretization Methods and Solvers in a Non-Smooth World session, which was co-led by the task parallelism ExCALIBUR project too. Her talk, Parallel in Time Algorithms for Geophysical Fluid Dynamics: Challenges Posed by Non-Smooth Physics, provided an excellent overview of the field and current state of the art being enhanced by the parallel in time ExCALIBUR project.
A busy week overall, PASC was an excellent opportunity to showcase the interesting work being undertaken in ExCALIBUR across projects and also demonstrated the wide range of topics being explored. It was nice that there was a conference which was so cross disciplinary that it could accommodate such a diverse set topics.