Opening Frontiers with Extreme Capability Computing

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Speaker(s): Frederick H. Streitz ’83, P’13

Lawrence Livermore has a long history of fielding some of the world’s largest computers, fueled by our nearly insatiable need for both capacity and capability computing. Each new generation in computing brings with it the ability to perform simulations that were impossible with the earlier computers. I will discuss the development of three applications designed to run on the largest computer on earth: the solidification of a molten metal, the development of a fluid instability, and the electrophysiology of a beating human heart. Although the enormous scale of these simulations uncovered a number of unexpected technical hurdles, resolution of these challenges allows us to overcome limitations of both time and length scale–opening windows to discovery and spurring innovation.This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-‐AC52-‐07NA27344.

Colloquium

Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. in Shanahan B460. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.