A “multicore” revolution is occurring in computer chip technology. No longer able to sustain the previous growth period where processor speed was continually increasing, chip manufacturers are instead producing multicore architectures that pack increasing numbers of cores onto the chip. In the arena of high performance scientific computing, this revolution is forcing programmers to rethink the basic models of algorithm development, as well as parallel programming from both the language and parallel decomposition process.
To ensure that science effectively harnesses this new technology, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is receiving $3.125 million in stimulus funds over the next two years from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to develop the Computational Science and Engineering Petascale Initiative. As part of this program, NERSC will hire eight post-doctoral researchers to help design and modify modeling codes in key research areas such as energy technologies, fusion and biosciences, to run on emerging many-core systems.
