Accelerating Memory-Access-Limited HPC Applications via Novel Fast Data Compression

A fast-paced continual increase on the ratio of CPU to memory speed feeds an exponentially growing limitation for extracting performance from HPC systems. Breaking this memory wall is one of the most important challenges that the HPC community faces today. In Phase I we introduced aggressive innovations enable the injection of unprecedented acceleration into vast classes of memory-access-bound HPC codes via ultra-fast software-based data compression. Groundbreaking speedup on a fully functional NPBCG prototype was delivered to NASA, thus validating the tremendous potential of our approach. The proposed approach is based on a revolutionary theory of compression spearheaded by Accelogic (Compressive Computing), which is able to provide enormous compressive gains for the typical floating point data of HPC applications. In Phase II we will build on our success with the NPBCG benchmark, and move boldly into tackling the acceleration of a real-life high-profile code, namely NASA�s Cart3D, improving its performance by a paradigm-shifting 2x to 4x end-to-end wall-clock time acceleration by the end of Phase II. Our firm has accumulated crucial know-how and has synthesized its expertise into a powerful industrial-quality process for software acceleration that will be used to ensure success on completing Phase II objectives. In Phase II we also plan on injecting a second NASA code with basic Compressive Computing techniques, and providing it with base levels of acceleration of ~1.3-2x. We will choose this second code from a pool of high-profile codes that have already signed up as early adopters for this project: FUN3D, USM3D, Enzo, and WRF. The work on a second NASA code will also serve as the ultimate field test of the broadness and ease-of-infusion of the proposed technology. We have secured complementary funds in the amount of $500,000 to increase resources and ensure that the proposed Phase II proposed will be successfully accomplished.

The impact of the proposed technology spans most areas of importance to NASA's scientific missions, including: aerospace, weather forecasting, cosmology, combustion, climate research, and chemistry, among others. To this date, five of the Top NASA HPC applications have enlisted as partners of the project to become early adopters of the technology. This fact speaks clearly about the interest that the NASA community has shown on the potential uses and benefits of infusing the knowledge generated from this project into NASA. Furthermore, once the technology is fully operational, it will benefit tens of thousands of users, who will see substantially increased performance in their regular, day-to-day runs, as well as in their massive, supercomputer-based production runs. One of the lead developers of NASA's Top Codes mentions that this technology "can be considered critical in achieving the next generation of so-called exascale software applications, [and] in turn, these efforts will enable scientific and engineering breakthroughs previously considered computationally intractable".

The resulting technology will increase the efficiency of memory access in most modern computer architectures, thus directly enabling unprecedented speedups in memory-access-bound HPC applications. With a significant fraction of HPC codes belonging to this "memory-bound" category, numerous scientists, developers, researchers, and complete industries will benefit, in areas as varied as aerospace, climate research, molecular dynamics, chemistry, weather forecasting, energy, civil engineering, geophysics, and life sciences, among others.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.