Petascale science and engineering

The sustained-petaflop computing power to be provided by the Blue Waters project will allow U.S. scientists to make extraordinary leaps in knowledge and discovery.

To ensure their success, the Blue Waters team is helping researchers around the country to prepare their codes to run on the supercomputer the Blue Waters project will deploy, as well as other petascale computing systems. These multiyear collaborations include help porting and re-engineering existing applications. In some cases, the teams will build entirely new applications based on new programming models.

Petascale Computing Resource Allocations from the National Science Foundation allow research teams to work closely with the Blue Waters project team in preparing their codes. Applications for these allocations are due once a year, throughout the life of the Blue Waters project. In order to receive an award of time on the Blue Waters supercomputer from the National Science Foundation, research teams MUST receive a pre-allocation through the PRAC process. Researchers must participate in the PRAC application and allocation process even if they do not need travel support or other code-development funding.

Current Petascale Computing Resource Allocations winners collaborating with NCSA and the Blue Waters team include:

Simulation of contagion on very large social networks with Blue Waters


Principal Investigators: Keith Bisset, Virginia Tech; Shawn Brown, Carnegie-Mellon University; Douglas Roberts, Research Triangle Institute

Read the Access story: Getting viral

Petascale research in earthquake system science on Blue Waters

Principal Investigator: Thomas Jordan, University of Southern California

Read the Access story: Preparing for the big one

Formation of the first galaxies: predictions for the next generation of observatories

Principal Investigator: Brian O'Shea, Michigan State University

Read the Access story: Leaving the dark days

The computational microscope

Principal Investigator: Klaus Schulten, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Read the Access stories: Getting the rabbit in the hat and Powering new discoveries

Computational chemistry at the petascale

Principal Investigator: Monica Lamm, Iowa State University

Read the Access story: ...And the sky is blue

Understanding tornadoes and their parent supercells through ultra-high resolution simulation/analysis

Principal Investigator: Robert Wilhelmson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Read the Access story: When tornadoes attack

Petascale simulation of turbulent stellar hydrodynamics


Principal Investigator: Paul Woodward, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Read the Access story: Powering new discoveries

Accelerating nano-scale transistor innovation
Principal Investigators: Gerhard Klimeck, Purdue, Thomas Hacker, Purdue, Mathieu Luisier, Purdue

Simulating vesicle fusion on Blue Waters
Principal Investigators: Vijay Pande, Stanford

Using petascale computing capabilities to address climate change uncertainties
Principal Investigators: Donald Wuebbles and Xin-Zhong Liang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Hierarchical molecular dynamics sampling for assessing pathways and free energies of RNA catalysis, ligand binding, and conformational change
Principal Investigators: Thomas Cheatham, University of Utah; Darrin York, Rutgers; Carlos Simmerling, State University of New York at Stony Brook; Adrian Roitberg, University of Florida; Ross Walker, San Diego Supercomputer Center

Petascale multiscale simulations of biomolecular systems
Principal Investigators: Gregory Voth and Benoit Roux, University of Chicago

Petascale plasma physics simulations using PIC codes
Principal Investigator: Warren Mori, University of California-Los Angeles

Type Ia supernovae
Principal Investigators: Stanford Woosley, University of California Observatories; Michael Zingale, State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook; John Bell

Enabling breakthrough kinetic simulations of the magnetosphere via petascale computing
Principal investigators: Homayoun Karimabadi, Kevin Quest, Amitava Majumdar, University of California-San Diego

Super instruction architecture for petascale computing

Principal Investigator: Rodney Bartlett, University of Florida

Computational relativity and gravitation at petascale: Simulating and visualizing astrophysically realistic compact binaries


Principal Investigator: Manuela Campanelli, Rochester Institute of Technology

Testing hypotheses about climate prediction at unprecedented resolutions on the NSF Blue Waters system

Principal Investigators: Benjamin Kirtman, University of Miami; William Large, University Corporation For Atmospheric Research; David Randall, Colorado State University; Cristiana Stan, Institute of Global Environment and Society

Read the Access story: 'People's lives are affected'

Peta-Cosmology: galaxy formation and virtual astronomy

Principal Investigator: Kentaro Nagamine, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Enabling science at the petascale: From binary systems and stellar core collapse to gamma-ray bursts

Principal Investigator: Erik Schnetter, Louisiana State University & Agricultural and Mechanical College

Lattice quantum chromodynamics on Blue Waters

Principal Investigator: Robert Sugar, University of California, Santa Barbara

Petascale simulations of complex biological behavior in fluctuating environments

Principal Investigator: Ilias Tagkopoulos, University of California-Davis

Enabling large-scale, high-resolution, and real-time earthquake simulations on petascale parallel computers


Principal Investigator: Liqiang Wang, University of Wyoming

Petascale computations for complex turbulent flows


Principal Investigator: Pui-Kuen Yeung, Georgia Institute of Technology

Breakthrough petascale quantum Monte Carlo calculations

Principal Investigator: Shiwei Zhang, College of William and Mary