DOE 2000

Collaboration Without Boundaries

The vision of DOE 2000 is to accelerate the ability of the Department of Energy to accomplish its mission through advanced computing and collaboration technologies. DOE 2000 ushers in a new era of scientific collaboration that transcends geographic, discipline, and organizational boundaries.

By enabling nationwide use of unique computational and experimental resources, this initiative will realize significant cost savings while making research and development (R&D) more productive. DOE 2000 will set the standard for scientific R&D organizations in the 21st century.

DOE 2000 will bring together scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines and organizations and provide them with state-of-the-art tools to solve increasingly complex scientific problems. This initiative will use advanced computing technologies to make R&D more productive and advanced collaboration technologies to make DOE’s unique facilities and resources more accessible. There are three component to the DOE 2000 initiative:

Advanced Computational Testing and Simulation (ACTS):Advanced computational methodologies that facilitate the application of scientific models to experimental, environmental, and simulation data.

 

National Collaboratories: Laboratories without walls that unite expertise, instruments, and computers, enabling scientists to carry out cooperative research independent of geography.

 

Pilot Projects: Virtual laboratories that give scientists the technology to collectively observe and attack problems using combinations of ideas, methodologies, and instrumentation that do not exist at any single location.

 

 

 

Advanced Computational Testing & Simulation (ACTS)

Advanced computational simulations will be required to address many of DOE’s mission requirements. Full-scale nuclear weapons tests are no longer possible and will be replaced by computer simulation of reliability and accident scenarios. Simulations are also needed for validation of long-term environmental remediation strategies and to anticipate the ecological effects of human activity on the global climate.

Optimal solutions will require an integrated software framework that leverages the work and expertise of all scientists working on these and similar problems. The ACTS User Toolkit will provide a science-friendly package of software, algorithms, interfaces, and other tools that make the power of high-performance computers accessible to researchers.

Goals

Develop an integrated set of software tools, algorithms, and environments that accelerate the adoption and use of advanced computing.

Develop an advanced software framework for the integration of the other tools into a productive distributed environment.

Enable DOE programs to thoroughly exploit large-scale computing resources to address mission-critical problems.

 

Benefits

High-performance computation enables scientists to test theories when conventional experimentation is dangerous, expensive, or infeasible.

Computational simulations are providing results that exhibit ever-increasing fidelity to physical reality.

 

 

The National Collaboratories

DOE has a remarkable array of research facilities, many of which have no counterpart anywhere else in the world. These state-of-the-art installations are important national resources that represent large federal investments in specialized research. Effective use of these facilities has been constrained by scientists’ need for physical proximity to colleagues and resources.

The National Collaboratories will enable scientists at multiple locations to use these facilities simultaneously, working together in real time on experiments and simulations. Collaboration tools will include networked file and database facilities, resource locators, video conferencing, remote instrumentation, multiple-supercomputer software, and shared visualization and virtual reality applications.

Goals

Develop new capabilities, such as shared virtual reality spaces.

Resolve known problems, such as the need for reliable multicasting.

Broker community-wide agreement on standards and architecture.

 

Benefits

Collaboration is essential to the efficient solution of large-scale scientific and engineering problems.

Making experimental instruments and supercomputers available to qualified researchers throughout industry and academia will significantly increase the return on investment.

 

 

 

Pilot Project:

The Materials MicroCharacterization Collaboratory

Technologically advanced materials exhibit unique properties because their microstructure and microchemistry are carefully tailored during the manufacturing process. In order to improve these properties, such as wear resistance and fracture toughness, scientists need to develop a deeper understanding of why materials behave the way they do.

The Materials MicroCharacterization Collaboratory (MMC) will link scientists at five materials microcharacterization facilities in an interactive electronic laboratory. Each of these facilities possesses unique, dedicated microcharacterization instrumentation not available elsewhere. Together, the participating centers represent virtually every technique that employs electrons, ions, photons (including x-rays) neutrons, mechanical and/or electromagnetic radiation to elucidate the microstructure of any material in the physical sciences. The MMC will allow other participants easy access to these complementary facilities, enhancing the overall quality of the materials science effort at each site.

A typical provider is the High Temperature Materials Laboratory at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which provides researchers with advanced materials characterization instrumentation. Currently more than 200 users travel to the laboratory to work side by side with staff scientists. The MMC will provide greater access to the laboratory at less cost by allowing users to operate the instrumentation remotely over the network.

The MMC will further the DOE research mission in areas such as basic energy science, energy efficiency, and pollution control—for example, finding better exhaust catalyst materials to reduce diesel emissions.

Pilot Project:

The Diesel Combustion Collaboratory

DOE’s ongoing support of research into more efficient and cleaner-burning diesel engines has resulted in highly successful industrial partnerships. The Diesel Combustion Collaboratory (DCC) aims to maximize the return on these investments through increased utilization of computational models and a reduction in travel expenses. The objective is a streamlined design process with an enhanced rate of information exchange among scientists in diesel engine research.

DCC will enable researchers at the participating centers to share graphical data via desktop workstations and to archive experimental data and model inputs in a World Wide Web-accessible format. The goal is to build a Web-based data-processing tool to allow quicker analysis of experimental data and modeling results.

Videoconferencing capability is a key element in the DCC. There are many instances where meetings of a team or subgroup would be productive, but time commitment and cost outweigh the usefulness of getting together. The proposed solution is a system that incorporates multi-site, workstation-based video conferencing. Each person in the group would have a workstation with microphone and camera and would be able to hear and see each of the other group members. Videoconferencing is a cost-effective way to foster lively interchange among scientists across the country.

Another goal of the DCC is to produce a distributed meta-computer to run combustion models at widely separated locations. From their own workstations, scientists will be able to run modeling programs on powerful remote computers without the specialized training that is currently required to access those computers. The meta-computer will produce results faster and make them available to the whole Collaboratory.

For more information:

Mary Anne Scott

Energy Research ER-31

U.S. Department of Energy

19901 Germantown Road

Germantown, MD 20874-1290

http://www.er.doe.gov/production/octr/mics/index.html

Internet: mics@oer.doe.gov

Phone: (301) 903-6368

Fax: (301) 903-7774

DISCLAIMER

This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Government. While this document is believed to contain correct information, neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor The Regents of the University of California, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by its trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof, or The Regents of the University of California. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof, or The Regents of the University of California. Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is an equal opportunity employer.

Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC 03-76SF00098.

PUB-789/02-97