Dona Crawford on Why Big Science Requires Big Computers

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Over at the ISC Blog, one of our HPC Rock Stars, Dona Crawford writes that Big Science requires Big Computers.

LLNL’s cutting-edge Cardioid simulation, developed in collaboration with scientists at IBM Research, is a prime example of the groundbreaking, globally significant science that can be accomplished on big machines. Run on the 20-petaFLOP/s Sequoia supercomputer (#2 on the TOP500), Cardioid is a highly scalable code that models in exquisite detail the electrophysiology of the human heart, including activation of heart muscle cells and cell-to-cell electrical coupling. Developed to run with high efficiency in the extreme strong-scaling limit, LLNL scientists were able to model a highly resolved whole heart beating in nearly real time, representing a greater than 1,200-time improvement in time-to-solution from the previous state of the art and performing to within 12% of real-time simulation.

In a political climate today where science funding is facing dramatic cuts, this kind of story is important for all of us to communicate. The science is too important to push aside. Read the Full Story.