TASKS FOR THE SUPERCOMPUTER

Specialists of the RAS SB Institute of System Dynamics and Management Theory (Irkutsk) have designed a supercomputer named after Acad. V. Matrosov in honor of the first director and founder of the institute. It has become the largest computer complex in the eastern part of Russia--its peak capacity is 33.7 teraflops.

The Irkutsk Region is one of the most industrially developed territories of Russia. There are numerous plants of the fuel and power sector, extracting, steel and iron, chemical, aircraft, and machine-building industries. Each of these industries is in want of modern computer technologies.

According to Acad. Igor Bychkov, Director of the RAS SB Institute of System Dynamics and Management Theory, "supercomputer center technologies could be applied to settle a wide range of scientific and practical tasks, including research works in the field of nanotechnologies, plasma physics, bioinformatics, modeling of new chemical compounds and industrial materials, development of pharmaceuticals, design of units and joints for aircraft and machine-building industries. The center will fulfill requests of not only structural units of the Irkutsk Research Center, but also local industrial plants. If necessary, we'll be able to increase our capacities and adjust software and hardware for a special purpose".

It is now that a series of exciting projects is being implemented with the assistance of the supercomputer named after Acad. V. Matrosov. Andrei Radzhabov, C and. Sc. (Phys. & Math.), Senior Research Assistant of the RAS SB Institute of System Dynamics and Management Theory, told about one of these projects to the Science in Siberia newspaper. As he stated, the supercomputer has already been used to perform numerical modeling of various aspects of strong interaction of elementary particles, in particular, theoretical calculations of an anomalous magnetic moment of a muon. Scientific interest to this subject is attributed to an extremely high accuracy of this value proved

experimentally, which makes it possible to check existing physical perceptions. Deviation of theoretical predictions from experimental results could indicate existence of unknown interactions. But this requires assessing influence of already known electromagnetic, strong and weak interactions. The research group composed of employees of the Institute of System Dynamics and Management Theory and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Moscow Region) studied partial influence of a strong interaction from a natural phenomenon of scattering of light by light. The supercomputer enabled scientists to reduce significantly the computing period and study in detail dependence of obtained results on analog assumptions.

According to Radzhabov, the second task was to model a condition of the nuclear substance in extreme terms, i.e. in the course of collision of heavy ions in accelerators. It was assumed that this results in a new state of the substance known as quark-gluon plasma. To study it theoretically, scientists use different models based on quantum chromodynamics. The supercomputer performs numerical calculations of physical characteristics, which would be quite difficult without it.

These are examples of scientific tasks researchers of numerous scientific institutes have to solve. And it can be assumed that the supercomputer named after Acad. V. Matrosov will always be in high demand, let alone specialists from other industries showing more and more interest in it.

The Supercomputer and Supertasks to Solve.--A. Radzhabov, "Science in Siberia" newspaper, No. 7, 2014

Photo by V. Korotkoruchko from the web-site of the RAS SB Institute of System Dynamics and Management Theory

Prepared by Sergei MAKAROV