User Project Details

EXAHD

EXAHD - An Exa-Scalable Two-Level Sparse Grid Approach for Higher-Dimensional Problems in Plasma Physics and Beyond

Computer Science

Universität Stuttgart

Institut für Parallele und Verteilte Systeme (IPVS)

Fusion energy has the potential to become an environmentally friendly and safe alternative source of energy for generations to come, and international efforts such as the ITER experiment, currently under construction in southern France, seek to confirm this. In magnetic fusion devices, deuterium and tritium are heated up to a temperature of approximately 100.000.000 K and are confined via a toroidal magnetic field, so that the nuclei can fuse, releasing significant amounts of energy in the process. Unfortunately, the unavoidable steep temperature and density gradients drive small-scale plasma turbulence which in turn leads to large heat and particle losses. Numerical simulations are crucial to understand, predict, and control plasma turbulence with the help of large-scale computations. Due to the high dimensionality of the underlying equations, the fully resolved simulation of the numerical ITER is out of scope even for the next generation of exascale computers. We therefore propose to use a hierarchical discretization scheme, sparse grids, to overcome the current computational limits (number of discretization points per dimension and memory requirements). In the project, we build sophisticated schemes which exploit the properties of the hierarchical numerical approach that overcome the exa-challenges communication and resilience.