High Performance Computing

Groups within CCP2 interested in the exploitation of high performance computing techniques to investigate atomic and molecular scattering problems have formed a Consortium, the Multiphoton and Electron Processes HPC Consortium. The consortium is chaired by Professor K T Taylor (QUB) and has been funded by EPSRC to use the computer resources at CSAR and at HPCx. Professor Taylor's group is currently working on HECToR.

As noted in the 2006 CCP2 News bulletins, Professor Taylor and colleagues Barry Doherty and Jonathan Parker were awarded a UK Research Councils' HEC Strategy Committee High Performance Computing Prize in the category of fastest application improvement, for their work on re-engineering the HELIUM code on HPCx. Professor N S Scott and Dr M P Scott (QUB), together with colleagues L Ixaru (Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering POB MG-6, Bucharest) and C Denis (University Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6), were awarded the UK Research Councils' HEC Strategy Committee HPC Prize (2006) for machine utilization, for work on the fast computation of Slater integrals needed for the 2DRMP code. Both groups were successful in obtaining EPSRC HPC Software Development Grants in 2007 for their respective projects.

Dr M P Scott also manages a PPARC/STFC consortium (PI A Hibbert) Atomic Physics for Astrophysics which makes use of the (EPSRC-funded) DL/QUB parallel R-matrix package PRMAT on HPCx (and in the near future on HECToR) to calculate electron scattering data for the iron-peak elements.

Members of the CCP2 Working Group were responsible for putting together the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics section of the science case for the next generation of UK HPC platforms to follow HECToR.