ASCR Program Documents

ASCR@40 : Four Decades of Department Of Energy Leadership in Advanced Scientific Computing Research

In December 2017, the Advisory Committee for DOE’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) was asked to document some of the major impacts of ASCR and its predecessor organizations. This seemingly simple request kicked off a multi-year process of information gathering, distilling, curating, and refining. Input was provided by over 100 scientists.

Full Report
Individual Story Summaries: Petaflops for the People | Building the Computational Workforce | Supporting Science through Open-Source Software | World-Leading Computing Facilities | Building Better Computers | Overcoming Scaling Challenges | Making Sense of Big Data | Grid Computing For High-Speed Collaboration | Moving Big Data | Uncertainty Quantification | Applying Equations to Complex Problems | Modeling and Simulation

A Quantum Path Forward

Today, many scientific experts recognize that building and scaling quantum-protected and enhanced communication networks are among the most important technological frontiers of the 21st century. The international research community perceives the construction of a first prototype global quantum network—the Quantum Internet—to be within reach over the next decade.

In February 2020, the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research hosted the Quantum Internet Blueprint workshop to define a potential roadmap toward building the first nationwide quantum Internet. The workshop participants included representatives from DOE national laboratories, universities, industry, and other U.S. agencies with serious interests in quantum networking. The goal was to provide an outline of the essential research needed, detail any engineering and design barriers, and suggest a path forward to move from today’s limited local network experiments to a viable, secure quantum Internet.

Workshop Report

5G Enabled Energy Innovation Workshop (5GEEIW)

On March 10-12, 2020, the Office of Science (SC) organized a three-day workshop to deliver a community-based report highlighting 5G and beyond basic research, development, applications, technology transition, infrastructure, and demonstration opportunities in support of the U.S. DOE mission. The brochure and report will help the DOE Office of Science understand both the challenges and the opportunities offered by 5G and emerging advanced wireless technologies in the areas of basic research, development, and integration into scientific user facility operations.

Cover | Brochure | Workshop Report

Data and Models: A Framework for Advancing AI in Science

On June 5, 2019, the Office of Science (SC) organized a one-day roundtable to focus on enhancing access to high-quality and fully traceable research data, models, and computing resources to increase the value of such resources for artificial intelligence (AI) research and development and the SC mission.1 In this report, we consider AI to be inclusive of, for example, machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), neural networks (NN), computer vision, and natural language processing (NLP). We consider “data for AI” to mean the digital artifacts used to generate AI models and/or employed in combination with AI models during inference. In part, this roundtable was motivated by the recognition that a large portion of science data currently are not well suited for AI.

View Technical Report

Storage Systems and I/O: Organizing, Storing, and Accessing Data for Scientific Discovery

In September, 2018, the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program convened a workshop to identify key challenges and define research directions that will advance the field of storage systems and I/O over the next 5–7 years. The workshop concluded that addressing these combined challenges and opportunities requires tools and techniques that greatly extend traditional approaches and require new research directions. Key research opportunities were identified.

View Technical Report

ASCR Workshop on In Situ Data Management

In January 2019, ASCR convened a workshop on In Situ Data Management (ISDM). The goal was to identify priority research directions (PRDs) to support current and future scientific computing needs, which will increasingly incorporate a number of different tasks that need to be managed along with the main simulation or data analysis tasks. The workshop identified six PRDs that highlight the components and capabilities needed for ISDM to facilitate scientific discovery from a variety of different data sources.

Cover | Brochure | Report

Quantum Networks for Open Science (QNOS)

DOE convened the Quantum Networks for Open Science (QNOS) Workshop in September 2018. The workshop was primarily focused on quantum networks optimized for scientific applications with the expectation that the resulting quantum networks could be extended to lay the groundwork for a generalized network that will evolve into a quantum internet (Q-Internet).

Report on Basic Research Needs for Scientific Machine Learning: Core Technologies for Artificial Intelligence

Scientific Machine Learning (SciML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have broad use and transformative effects across the Department of Energy. Accordingly, the ASCR January 2018 Basic Research Needs workshop report identifies six Priority Research Directions (PRDs) as viewed through the lens of applied mathematics and scientific computing. The six PRDs provide a sound basis for a coherent, long-term research and development strategy in SciML and AI.

Basic Research Needs Workshop for Microelectronics

This report is based on a workshop on Basic Research Needs for Microelectronics, which was held October 23–25, 2018, and sponsored by ASCR, BES, and HEP. The goal of the workshop was to identify basic research needs associated with advanced microelectronics technologies for applications relevant to the DOE mission, including computing, power grid management, and science facility workloads.

JPG | Brochure | Report

Report for DOE ASCR Basic Research Needs Workshop on Extreme Heterogeneity

In the 2025–2030 time frame, external economic drivers and design diversity will result in systems built from a custom aggregation of components; and the difficulty and complexity of developing scientific software will increase. This fundamental change in computer architecture design has been deemed the era of “extreme heterogeneity.”

The 2018 Basic Research Needs Workshop on Extreme Heterogeneity identified five Priority Research Directions for realizing the capabilities needed to address the challenges posed in this era of rapid technological change.

Workshop Report Brochure

Exascale Requirements Review Crosscut Report

During fiscal years (FYs) 2015 and 2016, the Exascale Requirements Reviews brought key computational domain scientists, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) planners and administrators, and experts in computer science and applied mathematics together. Meetings were held for each of the DOE’s six Office of Science (SC) program offices. The results of the six reviews have been published in reports available on the web here and at http://exascaleage.org/. This report is based off the six reviews and a final crosscut review including all six program offices and held in early 2017. The report presents a summary of the individual reports and of common and crosscutting findingings, and it identifies opportunities for productive collaborations among the DOE SC program offices. See the Exascale Requirements Review (MainpageExternal link) for more information on this report (report.pdf file XMB) and information on the five other Exascale Requirements Reviews.

Workshop Report.

Report of the HPC Correctness Summit

This report details the findings of the HPC Correctness Summit Workshop sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program to identify opportunities and challenges in High Performance Computing (HPC). The workshop was held on Jan 25 – 26, 2017, in Washington DC. Technologies for verification and debugging have made significant strides in the context of general systems software. An investment in such technologies to make them applicable for High Performance Computing (HPC) could lead to substantial improvements in the productivity and sustainability of HPC software development.

Workshop Report.

ASCR Report on Quantum Computing Testbed for Science Descriptive

This report details the findings of the Quantum Testbed Stakeholder Workshop sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program to identify opportunities and challenges in establishing a quantum testbed to advance quantum computing hardware and software systems that will enable science investigations. The workshop was held on February 14 – 16, 2017 in Washington DC and served as a forum for individual stakeholders from academia, industry, national laboratories, and government to provide their perspectives and ideas on the overarching goals and objectives of a quantum testbed, technical considerations, and how a quantum testbed program would be synergistic with other nascent quantum computing efforts in the US and worldwide. This report summarizes discussions on best practices for management of various types of collaborative research activities, including topics such as workforce training and building strong relationships with the research community. It also reviews specific technologies that have been identified by the ASCR Program as being important for the success of a quantum testbed whose overall goal is advancing quantum computing for scientific applications in the next five years.

Workshop Report.

STREAM2016: Streaming Requirements, Experience, Applications and Middleware Workshop

This report describes the discussions, outcomes, and conclusions from STREAM2016: Streaming Requirements, Experience, Applications and Middleware Workshop – the second workshop in the STREAM series, held on March 22-23, 2016 in Tysons, VA. STREAM2016 focused on DOE applications, computational and experimental facilities, as well as software systems. The role of streaming and steering as a critical aspect of the linkage between experimental and computing facilities was pervasive throughout the workshop. Given the overlap in interests and challenges faced by industry, the workshop had significant presence from several major companies in this area.

Workshop Report.

DOE Network 2025: Network Research Problems and Challenges for DOE Scientists Workshop

Guided by (1) a desire for an overall million-fold increase in bulk data transfer rates over the next decade and (2) a need to support a more complex and diverse mix of traffic flows over current and future networks, the DOE Network 2025 workshop, held in Bethesda, Maryland, February 1–2, 2016, articulated an integrated R&D portfolio to achieve these goals. The workshop identified short-, medium-, and long-term challenges to guide a robust network research program within the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research program. Integrated and agile protocols and related technologies must be developed and tailored to these science environments in the short- and medium-terms by leveraging current backbone capacities and their future enhancements to multiple 100 Gbps and Tbps rates. New capabilities and services need to be integrated into these networks to support complex and dynamic network traffic flows.

For more information:

• Network Research Problems and Challenges for DOE Scientists Workshop Website.
• Workshop Report.

DOE EXASCALE REQUIREMENTS REVIEW — ASCR

During fiscal years (FYs) 2015 and 2016, the Exascale Requirements Reviews brought key computational domain scientists, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) planners and administrators, and experts in computer science and applied mathematics together. Meetings were held for each of the DOE’s six Office of Science (SC) program offices.

For the ASCR Research Exascale Requirements Review, the available computing environment was decomposed into three tiers to clarify the differences in platform readiness and provide a common language to address the different types of systems and their associated needs.

See the Exascale Requirements Review Mainpage for more information on this report and information on the five other Exascale Requirements Reviews.

DOE EXASCALE REQUIREMENTS REVIEW — BER/ASCR

During fiscal years (FYs) 2015 and 2016, the Exascale Requirements Reviews brought together key computational domain scientists, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) planners and administrators, and experts in computer science and applied mathematics. Meetings were held for each of DOE’s six Office of Science (SC) program offices.

DOE SC convened an Exascale Requirements Review for the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) division, which took place on March 28–31, 2016, in Rockville, Maryland, and brought together leading BER researchers and program managers, scientific and HPC experts from the ASCR facilities and scientific computing research areas, and DOE’s BER and ASCR staff and ESnet personnel.

See the Exascale Requirements Review Mainpage for more information on this report and information on the five other Exascale Requirements Reviews.

DOE EXASCALE REQUIREMENTS REVIEW — FES/ASCR

DOE SC convened its programmatic Exascale Requirements Review for Fusion Energy Sciences on January 27–29, 2016, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The review brought together nearly 100 participants to interact regarding areas of expertise, challenges faced, and possibilities for the future exascale computing environment.

After DOE and ASCR presenters highlighted tasks to be accomplished (or at least initiated) during the review, a number of FES domain scientists highlighted FES science drivers, focusing on scientific goals to be pursued over the next decade and how exascale computing would play a role in reaching these goals.

See the Exascale Requirements Review Mainpage for more information on this report and information on the five other Exascale Requirements Reviews.

DOE EXASCALE REQUIREMENTS REVIEW — NP/ASCR

During fiscal years (FYs) 2015 and 2016, the Exascale Requirements Reviews brought key computational domain scientists, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) planners and administrators, and experts in computer science and applied mathematics together. Meetings were held for each of the DOE’s six Office of Science (SC) program offices

DOE SC convened an Exascale Requirements Review for the NP program on June 15–17 in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The review brought together leading nuclear physics researchers and program managers, scientific and HPC experts from the ASCR facilities and scientific computing research areas, and DOE NP and ASCR staff .

See the Exascale Requirements Review Mainpage for more information on this report and information on the five other Exascale Requirements Reviews.

BES COMPUTING AND DATA REQUIREMENTS IN THE EXASCALE AGE

The DOE SC Exascale Requirements Review for Basic Energy Sciences brought together key computational domain scientists and DOE planners and administrators to determine the requirements for an exascale ecosystem that includes computation, data analysis, software, workflows, HPC services, and the full range of computer requirements to support forefront scientific research in basic energy science through 2025.

See the Exascale Requirements Review Mainpage for more information on this report and information on the five other Exascale Requirements Reviews.

HEP COMPUTING AND DATA REQUIREMENTS IN THE EXASCALE AGE

The DOE SC Exascale Requirements Review for High Energy Physics brought together key computational domain scientists, DOE planners and administrators, and experts in computer science and applied mathematics to determine the requirements for an exascale ecosystem that includes computation, data analysis, software, workflows, HPC services, and whatever else is needed to support forefront scientific research in high energy physics through 2025.

See the Exascale Requirements Review Mainpage for more information on this report and information on the five other Exascale Requirements Reviews.

2015 Turbulent Flow Simulation at the Exascale: Opportunities and Challenges Workshop

This workshop report describes challenges and opportunities that computing at the exascale will bring to turbulent-flow simulations in applied science and technology. The need for accurate simulation of turbulent flows is evident across the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) applied-science and engineering portfolios, including combustion, plasma physics, nuclear-reactor physics, wind energy, and atmospheric science. The workshop was sponsored by the DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research and was held on August 4-5, 2015, at the Autograph Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Link to the report...

Programming Models & Environments Summit

Programming models and environments play the essential roles in high performance computing of enabling the conception, design, implementation and execution of science and engineering application codes. This report presents the topics discussed and results from the 2014 DOE Office of Science Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Programming Models & Environments Summit, and subsequent discussions among the summit participants and contributors to topics in this report.

Link to the report...

2014 Runtime Systems Summit

This report summarized runtime system challenges for exascale computing, that follow from the fundamental challenges for exascale systems. Some of the key exascale challenges that pertain to runtime systems include parallelism, energy efficiency, memory hierarchies, data movement, heterogeneous processors and memories, resilience, performance variability, dynamic resource allocation, performance portability, and interoperability with legacy code. In addition to summarizing these challenges, the report also outlined different approaches to addressing these significant challenges that have been pursued by research projects in the DOE-sponsored X-Stack and OS/R programs. It also included a chapter on deployment opportunities for vendors and government labs to build on the research results from these projects.

Neuromorphic Computing – Architectures, Models, and Applications Workshop

This workshop report describes basic research and development challenges and opportunities in the area of Neuromorphic Computing relevant to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program office. The focus of the workshop was to define a 10-20 year basic research and development roadmap for neuromorphic computing, a beyond-CMOS approach to future computing. The workshop was held during June 29 to July 1, 2016, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, TN. 

Management, Analysis and Visualization of Experimental and Observational Data workshop

The purpose of this workshop, held 29 September 2015 through 1 October 2015 in Bethesda, MD, is to help the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) and research community better understand needs related to the management, analysis, and visualization of experimental and observational data (EOD) collected and generated by experimental and observational science projects (EOS) at Office of Science user facilities.

September 29–October 1, 2015

Neuromorphic Computing – From Materials Research to Systems Architecture Roundtable

The Office of Science, through its Offices of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) and Basic Energy Science (BES) convened a roundtable consisting of 20 national lab, university and industry experts to evaluate computing architectures that go beyond Moore's Law and mimic neuro-biological architectures. The focus was on both advanced materials and scientific computing research opportunities to support development of a new paradigm for extreme and self-reconfigurable computing architectures.

October 29-30, 2015

The 2015 Cybersecurity for Scientific Computing Integrity - Research Pathways and Ideas Workshop

This workshop focused on three technological areas for understanding and improving cybersecurity namely:

• Trustworthy Supercomputing
• Extreme Scale Data, Knowledge, and Analytics
• Trust within Open, High-End Networking and Data Centers

June 2–3, 2015

The Future of Scientific Workflows

The mission of this workshop was to develop requirements for workflow methods and tools in a
combined high-performance computing (HPC) and distributed-area instruments and computing
(DAIC) work environment, in order to enable science applications to better manage their end-to-end data flow.

April 20-21, 2015

The 2015 Neuro-Inspired Computational Elements Workshop

This workshop focused on Information Processing and Computation Systems beyond von Neumann/Turing Architecture and Moore’s Law Limits. The workshop brought together researchers from different scientific disciplines and applications areas to provide a nucleation point for the development of next generation of information processing/computation architectures that go beyond stored program architectures and Moore’s Law limits.

February 23 - 25, 2015

DOE ASCR Workshop on Quantum Computing for Science

This report details the findings of the DOE ASCR Workshop on Quantum Computing for Science that was organized to assess the viability of quantum computing technologies to meet the computational requirements of the DOE’s science and energy mission, and to identify the potential impact of quantum technologies.

February 17 - 18, 2015

The 2015 Machine Learning and Understanding For Scientific Discovery Workshop

1. Self-aware runtime and operating systems
2. Deep learning for big data
3. Resiliency and Trust

January 7–9, 2015

The 2015 Cybersecurity For Scientific Computing Integrity Workshop

1. Extreme Scale Power Grid Simulation. ;
2. Trustworthy Supercomputing. ;
3. Trust within Open, High-End Networking and Data Centers. ; and
4. Extreme Scale Data, Knowledge, and Analytics for Understanding and Improving Cyber Security.

January 7–9, 2015

Storage Systems and Input/Output to Support Extreme Scale Science 

Four priority research directions emerged from this activity:

1. In the area of SSIO architectures, additional research is needed to develop solutions  to the challenge of managing upcoming deep and heterogeneous storage hierarchies, including storage in the compute system, and to explore alternative paradigms to the current file system model of access and organization.
2. In the area of metadata, name spaces, and provenance, research is needed to devise new methods of capturing, organizing, presenting, and exploring rich metadata  from  DOE  science  activities,  including  breaking  away  from  the current file model of data storage prevalent in DOE supercomputing facilities and science.
3. In the area of supporting science data, research is needed to develop the next generation of I/O middleware and services in support of the broad collection of HPC and experimental and observational data needs and to integrate with and  support new programming abstractions and workflow systems as they are adopted.
4. In the area of understanding SSIO, research is needed to improve our ability to  characterize the  storage activities of DOE  scientists and  to  model and predict the behavior of SSIO activities on future systems.

Published December 8-11, 2014

The 2014 Workshop on Modeling & Simulation of Systems and Applications

1. Integrated Modeling and Simulation of Performance, Power, and Reliability. ;
2. Standards, Integration, and Interoperability of ModSim Methodologies and Tools . ; and
3. Advances in Core Modeling and Simulation Methods and Tools.

Published December, 2014

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for Basic Energy Sciences Research: Target 2017

1. Scientists will need access to significantly more computational and storage resources to achieve their goals and reach BES research objectives . ;
2. Users will need assistance from NERSC to prepare for Cori (NERSC-­8) and follow-­on manycore systems. ;
3. Research teams need to run complex jobs of many different types and scales.;
4. BES is a leader in innovative use of HPC and requires a diverse set of resources and services from NERSC.; and
5. BES facilities need computational analysis and data storage resources beyond what they can provide.

Published October, 2014

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for Fusion Energy Sciences Research: Target 2017

1. To meet Fusion Sciences research objectives, FES researchers need computing and data storage resources in excess of those predicted by historical trends. ;
2. FES codes will require updated mathematical and I/O libraries that will run efficiently on next generation architectures. ;
3. FES scientists need support for both ensemble runs and large-­scale jobs..;
4. Teams need effective tools for managing workflows, performing data analysis, and profiling and developing codes .; and
5. Code teams need help porting applications to run on next-­generation architectures .

Published May, 2014

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for Biological and Environmental Research: Target 2017

1. Scientists need access to significantly more computational and storage resources to achieve their goals and reach BER research objectives. BER anticipates a need for six billion computational hours (25 times 2012 usage) and 107 PB of archival data storage (10 times 2012 usage) at NERSC in 2017.;
2. Simulation and analysis codes will need to access, read, and write data at a rate far beyond that available today.;
3. Support for high-throughput job workflows is needed.;
4. State-­of-­the-­art computational and storage systems are needed, but their acquisition must not interrupt ongoing research efforts.; and
5. NERSC needs to support data analytics and sharing, with increased emphasis on combining experimental and simulated data.

Published June, 2013

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for High Eneregy Physics Research: Target 2017

1. Researchers need access to significantly more computing and storage resources to support HEP mission goals through 2017.;
2. Scientists need vastly improved data I/O rates and better facilities for performing data-intensive science.;
3. Research teams need to run both large-scale simulations and massive numbers of individual jobs.; and
4. NERSC must help enable and ease the transition to next-generation architectures.;

Published June, 2013

Department of Energy (DOE) Fault Management Workshop

1. Describe the required HPC resilience for critical DOE mission needs
2. Detail what HPC resilience research is already being done at the DOE national laboratories and is expected to be done by industry or other groups
3. Determine what fault management research is a priority for DOE’s Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) over the next five years
4. Develop a roadmap for getting the necessary research accomplished in the timeframe when it will be needed by the large computing facilities across DOE

DOE Workshop Report on Multiphysics Simulations: Challenges and Opportunities

"Multiphysics Simulations: Challenges and Opportunities” considers multiphysics applications from algorithmic and architectural perspectives, where "algorithmic" includes both mathematical analysis and computational complexity and "architectural" includes both software and hardware environments. Many diverse multiphysics applications can be reduced, en route to their computational simulation, to a common algebraic coupling paradigm. Mathematical analysis of multiphysics coupling in this form is not always practical for realistic applications, but model problems representative of applications discussed herein can provide insight. A variety of software frameworks for multiphysics applications have been constructed and refined within disciplinary communities and executed on leading-edge computer systems. It examines several of these, exposes some commonalities among them, and attempts to extrapolate best practices to future systems.

October, 2012

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for Advanced Scientific Computing Research

1. ASCR projects will need more than one billion hours of computing time at NERSC in 2014 to meet their research goals and help enable world-class scientific discovery at Office of Science HPC facilities. Approximately one-half of these hours are self-reported requirements for visual analytics.
2. Applications will need to be able to read, write, and store 100s of terabytes of data for each simulation run. Many petabytes of long-term storage will be required to store and share data with the scientific community.
3. Access to appropriate resources and support for workflows involving many small and medium-sized runs is required.
4. ASCR projects need access to, and robust support for, a rich set of software applications, libraries, and tools.

Published January, 2012

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for Fusion Energy Sciences Research

The workshop revealed several key points, in addition to achieving its goal of collecting and characterizing computing requirements. Key requirements for scientists conducting research in FES include:

1. Larger allocations of computational resources at NERSC; and
2. Continued support for a complex ecosystem of software libraries and tools; and
3. Data storage systems that can support high-volume/high-throughput I/O; and
4. Robust, highly available computational systems with high throughput, long run times, and short queue waits

Published December, 2011

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for Basic Energy Sciences Research

Workshop participants reached a consensus on several key findings, in addition to achieving the workshop’s goal of collecting and characterizing computing requirements. The key requirements for scientists conducting research in BES are:

1. Larger allocations of computational resources; and
2. Continued support for standard application software packages; and
3. Adequate job turnaround time and throughput; and
4. Guidance and support for using future computer architectures

Published June, 2011

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for High Eneregy Physics Research

The workshop revealed several key points, in addition to achieving its goal of collecting and characterizing computing requirements. The chief findings:

1. Science teams need access to a significant increase in computational resources to meet their research goals;
2. Research teams need to be able to read, write, transfer, store online, archive, analyze, and share huge volumes of data; and
3. Science teams need guidance and support to implement their codes on future architectures; and
4. Projects need predictable, rapid turnaround of their computational jobs to meet missioncritical time constraints

Published November, 2010

NERSC Large Scale Computing and Storage Requirements for Biological and Environmental Research

The workshop revealed several key points, in addition to achieving its goal of collecting and characterizing computing requirements. Chief among them: scientific progress in BER-funded research is limited by current allocations of computational resources. Additionally, growth in mission-critical computing – combined with new requirements for collaborative data manipulation and analysis – will demand ever increasing computing, storage, network, visualization, reliability and service richness from NERSC.

Published October, 2010