SBIR/STTR Award attributes
High Performance Computing (HPC) models of heliophysics play a critical role in many aspects of space weather, from understanding fundamental physics to predicting real-world events. HPC models of heliophysics can also support the development of space weather mitigation technologies and decision making. NASA currently employs HPC models, such as ENLIL, to model the physics of the Solar wind. nbsp;However, ENLIL cannot currently fully exploit the parallel processing capabilities of modern multi-core compute nodes, nor can it utilize the GPU accelerators now common on NASArsquo;s HPC clusters. Maintaining a mission critical code like ENLIL can be a challenge, as both the number of man hours required to enable the code to properly exploit new hardware is non-trivial, and the HPC environment itself is continually evolving. A new Domain Specific Language (DSL), together with a source-to-source translator (called ptool), is proposed that will allow mission critical NASA codes, like ENLIL, to be written in a form that allows for improved portability between various HPC environments and hardware (including GPU accelerators) and reduce the level of skill and effort required to maintain and extend such codes. A proof-of-concept prototype of ptool was developed in Phase I and demonstrated using an in-house CFD solver. The main deliverables in Phase II are progress reports, the final, production version of ptool, and an updated version of ENLIL rewritten using ptoolrsquo;s syntax that exploits modern, heterogeneous HPC platforms, and will be easier to maintain as the HPC environment continues to evolve.
