ACCESS TO EU RESEACH INFRASTRUCTURES HUMAN POTENTIAL PROGRAMME

Access to the Bergen Computational Physics Laboratory

Abstract

The Bergen Computational Physics Laboratory (BCPL) offers scientific assistance and top of the line supercomputing power to European researchers primarily in atomic, molecular, nuclear, and particle reaction modelling. BCPL is based on institutions of the University of Bergen (UoB). Supercomputing power is provided by Para//ab on a 52 GigaFlop, 128 processor SGI Cray Origin 2000 facility, and the lab. is committed to upgrade it permanently to have the fastest computer available to researchers in Europe. From 2002 our capacity increases to 500 GigaFlop provided by a 96 processor IBM e-server p690 "Turbo Regatta" machine. The unique combination of exceptional parallel computing power and a massive scientific staff dedicated to reaction modelling enables to solve demanding tasks as the simulation and analysis of reactions at the CERN LHC, the worlds largest accelerator.

Summary

Principal characteristics of the infrastructure and of the support offered to users (max. 1500 characters) BCPL offers a world-class infrastructure, with the most up to date and permanently upgraded supercomputing hardware, which is part of the Norwegian National Supercomputing Project. It is superseded only by US defence research labs like Los Alamos Nat. Lab. This unique installation is complemented by a large number of dedicated theoretical physicists with large expertise in parallel computing and reaction theory. BCPL provides an optimum combination of resources for solving the most demanding tasks:
- The exceptional and continuously upgraded hardware
- Adequate and well tested (CRAY) software, with the best and most transparent parallel optimisation
- Devoted assisting scientific staff familiar both with parallel optimisation and physics of reaction modelling.

We know only one facility like this the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute at the U of Minn. BCPL is unique in focussing at reaction modelling on atomic and subatomic scale using quantum mechanical, statistical, kinetic, and fluid dynamical approaches. Among other tasks the BCPL will help to bridge the gap between LHC experiments and their theoretical simulation and analysis, where 1 day of experimental data can be simulated only in 10000 days of running time on the fastest computers.

We registered large user interest when preparing this proposal. In the first two years of operations we experienced large user demand, we accepted 44 research projects and served near to 100 researchers in Bergen. With mounting experimental investments (e.g. CERN-LHC) the need for theoretical evaluation of data is becoming a bottleneck. Thus, research in atomic and subatomic reaction theory is becoming crucial. Apart of basic research, subjects Accelerator Driven Transmutation of Nuclear Waste or Modelling of Aluminium Extrusion with Molecular Dynamics is of wide public interest and importance. This is confirmed by the many supporting letters received by the BCPL. BCPL offers EU financed acess to researchers from Member States and Associated States of the European Union.

Supported projects are selected from proposals based on scientific merit. Visiting groups and researchers are assigned a local researcher as Project Host and local project support.

Access offered annually Quantity 8000 Units of Access CPU hours
Number of individual researchers to benefit annually 32-64
Number of man-days to be spent at the infrastructure annually 600
Number of projects to be carried out annually 16-24

For further information on the participating institutions see:

http://www.mnfa.uib.no/ Det Matematisk- Naturvitenskapelige Fakultet
http://www.fi.uib.no/Sentef/ Theoretical and Computational Physics Section
http://www.parallab.uib.no/ Para//ab, UiB