The lack of highly scalable codes, especially commercial ones, presents a real barrier for companies, as is the integration of such codes into existing business workflows. Companies have built whole workflows around these applications, but they don’t scale to the platforms available now and they won’t scale to the newer generations of upcoming platforms. This leaves them locked in a position unable to capitalize on advanced R&D solutions that are there for the taking.

—Chris Carothers, director of the Center for Computational Innovations

Both Livermore and Rensselaer have built robust computational ecosystems equipped with the necessary resources to scale codes, including the hardware and infrastructure needed for testing and validation, infrastructure, tools for optimization and debugging, and the people harboring the expertise and experience required to program.

To fulfill its national security missions, LLNL applies its HPC modeling and simulation capabilities to both engineering and scientific problems. Rensselaer also applies HPC to the solution of practical engineering and design problems readily applicable to industry’s interest in improved product prototyping, development and validation. Through the federal Small Business Innovation Research program, Rensselaer has brought HPC capabilities to smaller companies.

The MOU will allow LLNL and Rensselaer to better support the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) announced by President Obama on 29 July. The agreement also will help support the High Performance Computing for Manufacturing Program (HPC4Mfg) announced by the US Department of Energy. HPC4Mfg is led by Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley national labs. HPC4Mfg couples US manufacturers with the national laboratories’ world-class computational research and development expertise to address key manufacturing challenges.

Improved modeling and simulation capabilities can improve the quality and reduce the time required to develop and get products and services to market, giving companies a competitive advantage.

Rensselaer and LLNL have a successful history of reaching out to industry. LLNL makes HPC expertise across multiple disciplines and HPC resources available to industry through its High Performance Computing Innovation Center on a cost-recovery basis. At Rensselaer, the Center for Computational Innovations has been reaching out to industry in strong collaboration with the Scientific Computing Research Center (SCOREC), led by Professor Mark Shephard, and the New York State High-Performance Computing Consortium (HPC^2), led by Vice President and Chief Information Officer John Kolb.