Read a number of articles this past week about NASA offering a Fortran optimization contest, the High Performance Fast Computing Contest (HPFCC) for their computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program. They want to speed up CFD by 10X to 1000X and are willing to pay for it.
The contest is being run through HeroX and TopCoder and they are offering $55K, across the various levels of the contests to the winners.
The FUN3D CVD code (manual) runs on NASA’s Pliedes Linux supercomputer complex which sports over 245K cores. Even when running on the supercomputer complex, a typical CVD FUN3D run takes thousands to millions of core hours!
The program(s)
FUN3D does a hypersonic fluid analysis over a (fixed) surface which includes a “simulation of mixtures of thermally perfect gases in thermo-chemical equilibrium and non-equilibrium. The routines in PHYSICS_DEPS enable coupling of the new gas modules to the existing FUN3D infrastructure. These algorithms also address challenges in simulation of shocks and boundary layers on tetrahedral grids in hypersonic flows.”
Not sure what all that means but I am certain there’s a number of iterations on multiple Fortran modules, and it does this over a 3D grid of points, which corresponds to both the surface being modeled and the gas mixture, it’s running through at hypersonic speeds. Sounds easy enough.
The contest(s)
There are two levels to the contest: an Ideation phase (at HeroX) and an architectural phase (at TopCoder). The $55000 is split up between the HeroX ideation phase which rewards a total of $20K: $10K for winner and 2-$5K runner up prizes and the TopCoder architectural phase which rewards a total of $35K: $15K for winner and $10K for 2nd place and another $10K for “Qualified improvement candidate”.
The (HeroX) Ideation phase looks for specific new or faster algorithms that could replace current ones in FUN3D which include “exploiting algorithmic developments in such areas as grid adaptation, higher-order methods and efficient solution techniques for high performance computing hardware.”
The (TopCoder) Architecture phase looks at specifically speeding up actual FUN3D code execution. “Ideal submission(s) may include algorithm optimization of the existing code base, Inter-node dispatch optimization or a combination of the two. Unlike the Ideation challenge, which is highly strategic, this challenge focuses on measurable improvements of the existing FUN3d suite and is highly tactical.”
Sounds to me that the ideation phase is selecting algorithm designs and the architecture phase is running the new algorithms or just in general speeding up the FUN3D code execution.
The equation(s)
There’s a Navier-Stokes equation algorithm that get’s called maybe a trillion times until the flow settles down, during a run and any minor improvement here would be obviously significant. Perhaps there are algorithmic changes that can be used, if your an aeronautical engineer or perhaps there are compiler speedups that can be found, if your a fortran expert. Both approaches can be validated/debugged/proved out on a desktop computer.
You have to be a US citizen to access the code and you can apply here. You will receive an email to verify your email address and then once your validated and back on the website, you need to approve the software use agreement. NASA will verify your physical address by sending a letter to you with a passcode to use to finally access the code. The process may take weeks to complete, so if your interested in the contest, best to start now.
The Fortran(s)
I learned Fortran 66 a long time ago and may have dabbled with Fortran 77 but that’s the last touched fortran. But it’s like riding a bike, once you do it, it’s easy to do it again.
As I understand it the FUN3D uses Fortran 2003 and NASA suggests you use the Gnu Fortran GFortran compiler as the Intel one has some bugs in it. There appears to be a Fortran 2015 but it’s not in main use just yet.
A million core hours, just amazing. If you could save a millisecond out of the routine called a trillion times, you’d save 1 billion seconds, or ~280K core hours.
Coders start your engines…