Research Projects

OPTIMA

Optimizing Industrial Applications for Heterogeneous HPC systems

Sector

High Performance Computing

Product/Objective

In order to support the growing demand for processing power from emerging HPC applications, in an energy-pragmatic wrapper, future HPC systems will incorporate accelerators. One promising approach to this end is the use of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) boards. These devices can be reconfigured at will to customize application accelerators, offering the key advantages of energy efficiency and/or performance, which, in most cases, is far superior to that of CPUs and GPUs. Applications and libraries are expected to run on these heterogeneous HPC systems with significantly greater energy efficiency, as described by the Energy Delay Product (EDP) metric. Specifically, the EDP of OPTIMA applications and libraries running on focused FPGA-based HPC systems should be more than ten times better than that of CPU-based systems and more than three times better than that of GPU-based systems.

Project Summary

OPTIMA is an SME-led project that aims to harness and optimize several industrial applications and a set of open source libraries. These will be used in at least three different application domains on two new HPC systems populated with FPGA integrated circuits and using several innovative programming environments.

OPTIMA’s main outcomes will be:

  • that the participating SMEs will benefit significantly from being able to run their applications much more efficiently than their competitors;
  • to further demonstrate that Europe is at the forefront of the development of efficient FPGA-based HPC systems and the applications/libraries that harness them;
  • the development of open source libraries and applications to enable third-party application developers to easily port to FPGA-based HPC systems;
  • an open-to-use HPC infrastructure supported by a purpose-built sustainable body.

Innovation

OPTIMA will deliver the efficiency of FPGA-based technologies in several industrial applications; thus, European industry will benefit from a new class of HPC resources featuring state-of-the-art advancements and truly innovative solutions. These solutions will exploit the new heterogeneous HPC systems and facilitate access to and use of these resources by turning them into an affordable service for everyone from SMEs to large organizations.

ES Role

EnginSoft is responsible for the specifications for all the applications and for the Lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) domains.
This method models fluids with dummy particles that perform propagation and collision processes on a discrete lattice mesh. LBM offers advantages over traditional Navier-Stokes equation solvers in the form of exceptional scalability, robust treatment of complex constraints, and the ability to perform larger time steps.
The LBM code used is a general-purpose fluid dynamics solver optimized for modern multi-core processors, particularly graphics processing units (GPUs). The solver is based on the Lattice Boltzmann Method, which is conceptually quite simple to understand and which scales very well over increasing computational resources.
The OPTIMA project will port the code to, and deploy it on, FPGA systems to accelerate the solution and leverage multi-FPGA systems.

Partners

TSI | CYBERBOTICS | FRAUNHOFER | EXAPSYS | ICCS | M3E | MAXELER | JULICH | ENGINSOFT | APPENTRA

Funding Scheme

This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No. 955739.
The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and from Greece, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland.

OPTIMA

Project web site

Visit the website

Duration

33 months

Period

March 2021 – November 2023

Coordinator

TSI (Greek Telecommunication Systems Institute)

Reference in EnginSoft

Gino Perna – Marisa Zanotti

Partners Number

10

Ask the Expert

Contact us!

Contact our R&D team for any information.

Ask for information

Find out more

Some of our competences in research and technology transfer

Research project

STAR

Simulation Technology Aeronautic Research

A virtual design environment created for the study of casting and welding processes, of surface and massive heat treatment, and of operational performance of alloy steel-made products, using a design chain approach.

Research project

GAP

Ghise e leghe di Alluminio ad elevate Prestazioni per componenti innovativi

L’innovatività del progetto GAP consiste nello sviluppo di materiali metallici innovativi, con potenzialità applicative multi-settoriali, incrementate dalla sperimentazione di nuove tecnologie specifiche (utilizzo di anime ceramiche per la pressocolata, trattamenti superficiali, metodologie di giunzione).

Research project

EASIT2

Engineering Analysis and Simulation Innovation Transfer (Squared)

The main aim of the project is to set out the knowledge and skills that a competent simulation engineer (CAE engineer) should possess, and to develop a set of tools that will enable engineers to develop, manage and certify their competencies within a wide range of industry sectors.