The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding for three 5-year projects focused on the integration of high performance computing at its X-ray and neutron source user facilities.
As scientific facilities get more powerful, the amount and complexity of the data they generate will only grow. Advanced computing resources and techniques will be required to keep up with the sheer volume of data flowing from next-generation facilities. One of those will be the upgraded Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.
The Office of Science has recently approved $30 million in funding for three new projects aimed at integrating high performance computing at DOE’s X-ray and neutron light source facilities. Five million of that funding will go to an Argonne-led research project called X-ray & Neutron Scientific Center for Optimization, Prediction and Experimentation (XSCOPE). This project will tackle the technical obstacles and tools needed to enhance data analysis capabilities at X-ray and neutron source user facilities. It aims to address challenges in computational science, applied mathematics and artificial intelligence/machine learning relevant to X-ray light sources. Its focus will be on the APS as the upgraded facility comes online next year.
“These capabilities will accelerate the discovery process and help to answer some of the most pressing scientific challenges of our time.” — Sven Leyffer, Argonne National Laboratory
XSCOPE will focus on unlocking new and pressing scientific challenges while dealing with the deluge of data from large-scale X-ray facilities. Enhancing the data analytics capabilities of light sources such as the APS will help fuel discoveries in biotechnology, advanced materials for energy and microelectronics, and more.
The project is led jointly by Sven Leyffer, principal investigator and deputy director of Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science division; Ian Foster, director of Argonne’s Data Science and Learning division; and Nicholas Schwarz, the lead for scientific software and data management at the APS. The team includes X-ray and computational scientists from several areas of the lab.
Read more on Argonne website
Image: An upgrade to the APS will result in much brighter X-ray beams and much more data generated. Newly funded DOE projects will focus on integrating high performance computing with X-ray light sources such as the upgraded APS.
Credit: JJ Starr/Argonne National Laboratory