This project is aimed toward the development of a transformative software framework to more easily calculate complex mathematical models for science and engineering research. There is currently significant burden on scientists who need to execute their mathematical models on different supercomputers; code developed for one supercomputer must often be re-developing or significantly adjusted to run on other supercomputers. Streamlining this development process will make modern hardware including supercomputers more accessible and impactful for scientific computations. Beyond the benefits to the computational science research agenda of this project, the new software infrastructure is expected to similarly help other domain scientists who develop similar types of mathematical models. All developed software will be publicly released with an open-source license.
Our goal is to develop a framework for code generation and efficient parallel solution of a large coupled set of partial differential equations (PDEs) with minimal user intervention. The Finite Volume Method will be used for discretization of the PDEs on unstructured meshes. From user-specified PDEs and their boundary and initial conditions in symbolic form, and characteristics of the target hardware platform, the framework will perform efficient code generation and enable load-balanced parallel execution. The generated parallel code can either be compiled and used as is, or can be used as a starting point for the insertion of additional physical models and features by advanced users. The software will be demonstrated for two problem types: (1) computation of reacting flows, in which multiple space and time dependent PDEs are non-linearly coupled, and (2) solution of the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE) for phonons, in which the discretization of the 7-dimensional BTE results in thousands of space and time dependent coupled PDEs.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
