FAST TRACK TO FUSION | DIGITAL & IT


Above left: Exaflop computing power may be key to accelerated practical fusion Above right: New fusion reactor designs may emerge from open-source collaboration


The need to “simulate everything everywhere all at


once” requires supercomputing and artificial intelligence. Akers says UKAEA and its partners need to use the world’s largest supercomputers and run simulations at 10^18 calculations per second (exaflops) to reduce the time to a solution, optimise the plant design and quantify risk in engineering. The UK government recently announced additional funding of £250m (US$318m) to boost research into artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and engineering biology and it will also fund an exascale supercomputer. The team hopes to use that in the next 10 years to produce a digital version of STEP that can be used to dramatically reduce the need for real-world validation. Dr Paul Calleja, Director, Research Computing Services,


University of Cambridge, talked in more detail about the ‘multi challenge’ of a simulation that has to couple different types of physics – fluids, plasma and materials – and do it on various timescales, some very long. Even with an ‘exa’ supercomputer to call on there is


a long way to go in developing the tools that will use the full potential of a computer that will cost £600m (US$762m) and draws 20 MW of power in operation. Exaflop computing power is wasted if there is a ‘bottleneck’ in the computation process, such as slow performance of the code or access to data. With Intel and Dell on board the partnership brings


together hardware and application providers and scientists to look at this as a holistic problem. Moving to


Intel’s new GPU systems provides an order of magnitude more performance per flop, while Nigel Green Director of emerging technologies and solutions, EMEA, at Dell said there would be a step change in how the companies work together. Adam Roe, HPC Technical Director, at Intel said the company was excited by the initiative, saying that, once informed by data, high performance computing can move from simulation to more complex science. What is more, by taking an open-source approach, the


partners are effectively calling on the global industry to help with the challenge. All work is on open standard hardware and open-source software. The partners are looking at the so-called ‘middleware’ and how to make the programme accessible to a broad range of scientists and engineers not used to supercomputing technologies. Open source would apply to tool chains and engineering


approaches will be open, and that gains the benefit of expert, concerted development, the partners explained. Open source means “the methodology gets critical analysis, they said, while tool chains were “more critically analysed, more sane and better reviewed”. What is more, such software remains up to date. Open source applies to the design and build of the


applications. Will the information be open? The project is funded by the UK government and that always involves a requirement to share learnings and sometimes data other fusion developers are taking the same approach. But data sets and intellectual property will remain be proprietary. ■


Addressing the open source security concerns The ‘open source’ approach raises an issue in a world where there is a growing fear of ‘spyware’ or loss of control to unfriendly regimes. The partners dismissed that bogeyman, saying “very strong cyber security” would protect data. Such fears may or may not be justified, but in technical sectors that require political support, if they are not addressed at the highest level the effect can be dramatic. In 2018 the UK government forced China’s out of its 5G networks, following on from US sanctions, fearing that the company concerned could spy on businesses and citizens. Huawei saw its UK turnover fall from £1.28bn in 2018 to £359.1m (US$1.63bn – US$456m) for the year ended December 2022. The day before the UKAEA’s launch, UK television showed an investigation into whether Chinese-supplied cameras used for surveillance in UK cities give China an opportunity to do its own surveillance. For the public, clearly the fear remains that ‘back doors’ allow software to be controlled by others: it is a fear that has to be addressed. ■


www.neimagazine.com | August 2023 | 31


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49