An Object oriented parallel programming system with adaptive runtime

High Performance Computing technology has advanced significantly, and advanced parallel computers are being built, with DOE leadership. Yet, the American engineering and manufacturing industry has not started leveraging parallel computing at a significant level, partly because of the challenging nature of modern simulation software. US competitiveness in manufacturing may suffer due to its ineffective utilization of parallel computers. The Charm++ parallel programming system, developed at a University with DOE and other federal funding, has demonstrated promise in handling complex dynamic parallel applications in computational science. It automates resource management, tolerates failures, and can manage power/thermal issues. The objective of this project is to transform Charm++ into a robust and easy to use system, targeted to industry applications. The Phase I effort will focus on analyzing the needs of manufacturing/engineering indus- try in this space, and innovative refactoring of the Charm++ software to retain the unique and innovative features of Charm++ that are of importance to this industry, while streamlining the software. Identifying features useful for academic research which are not needed in the targeted segment, will lead to stream- lining and optimizations. Additional tuning will be performed for the platforms of importance to this segment, including Infiniband, Ethernet and the Cloud platforms. Some new features aimed at enhancing ease of use and customer utility will also be implemented in this phase. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The SBIR project effort is aimed at producing a commer- cially viable product based on Charm++ that incorporates innovative research on object-oriented parallel programming with adaptive run-times. It will be the main commercial application to result directly from this effort. In addition, it is expected that libraries developed using Charm++ product will be an additional category of commercial applications. Some of these may come from Charmworks, Inc., but it is expected that many, in future, will come from other companies. End-user applications are probably the largest category of commercial applications enabled by this project effort. This project aims to achieve a broad impact on the state of HPC adoption among manufacturing and engineering industry.