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Foeschungszentrum Jülich - Research in Jülich 1_2013

Research in Jülich 1|201310 data becoming excessive. Simulations such as those performed by the group headed by Dr. Paul Gibbon from the Sim- ulation Laboratory (SimLab) Plasma Physics at JSC are highly scalable. The scientists are exploring the possibility of releasing particles from thin foils by means of high-power lasers. In this way, it may be possible to construct compact particle accelerators to be used in hospi- tals for radiotherapy, for instance. If Gibbon had the whole JUQUEEN computer at his disposal for a time then without any statistical approximation he could simulate the more than 100 billion particles located in ten square micro- metres of these foils that are only one nanometre in thickness. “In this way, we would be able to implement a realistic numerical experiment for the first time by investigating the properties of the ion beam as a function of the thickness of the foil – as in a real laboratory experi- ment,” says Gibbon. STORAGE SPACE FOR BRAIN MODEL The brain researchers headed by Prof. Markus Diesmann will also benefit from JUQUEEN. “We have already shown that our NEST software can exploit the parallelism of 100,000 compute nodes,” says Diesmann. NEST is used to mathe- matically describe individual neurons in the human brain. The scientists enter da- ta on anatomy and electric properties and as a result they obtain a forecast of the activity in certain brain regions. Ulti- mately, the researchers hope to be able to better understand the principles ac- cording to which the brain operates. “For our simulations it is, however, not only the enormous computing power of the JUQUEEN supercomputer that is im- portant but also its working memory, which has more space for data than its predecessor,” explains Diesmann. The researchers can now simulate larger re- gions of the brain than has previously been the case and thus also include in A comparison of computer speeds He could efficiently use all JUQUEEN’s 458,762 processors for his research: plasma physicist Dr. Paul Gibbon. Royal progress 1 PC speed 90,000times JUQUEEN faster than a PC, 6 times faster than JUGENE 15,000times JUGENE faster than a PC Background information

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