Energy Network Operation in the Supercomputing Era

Power delivery has become more dissimilar with that of the previous era. Conventional power and energy materials, such as relic fuels, nuclear power, and renewable energy (solar power, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind power, and biomass), are already present. The energy network operation becomes complicated because the integration of power generation, energy conversion, power transportation, and power utilization should be considered. There is an intricate assignment for us to perform swift power transmission for the extremely urgent situations. These situations are the results of regional lack of energy that needs to be brought back as soon as possible. Advanced supercomputing has already been one of the powerful solutions to work out these issues. This chapter initially presents an introduction of some of the supercomputing techniques and then the potential applications and demonstration examples follow to give the readers some hint on the handling of energy network operation.

Applications of Supercomputers in Population Genetics

Population genetics is the study of the frequency and interaction of alleles and genes in population and how this allele frequency distribution changes over time as a result of evolutionary processes such as natural selection, genetic drift, and mutation. This field has become essential in the foundation of modern evolutionary synthesis. Traditionally regarded as a highly mathematical discipline, its modern approach comprises more than the theoretical, lab, and fieldwork. Supercomputers play a critical role in the success of this field and are discussed in this chapter.

Applications of Supercomputers in Sequence Analysis and Genome Annotation

In the modern era of science, bioinformatics play a critical role in unraveling the potential genetic causes of various diseases. Two of the most important areas of bioinformatics today, sequence analysis and genome annotation, are essential for the success of identifying the genes responsible for different diseases. These two emerging areas utilize highly intensive mathematical calculations in order to carry out the processes. Supercomputers facilitate such calculations in an efficient and time-saving manner generating high-throughput images. Thus, this chapter thoroughly discusses the applications of supercomputers in the areas of sequence analysis and genome annotation. This chapter also showcases sophisticated software and algorithms utilized by the two mentioned areas of bioinformatics.

Accelerated Discovery and Design of Nano-Material Applications in Nuclear Power by Using High Performance Scientific Computing

The accelerated development of nano-sciences and nano-material systems and technologies is made possible through the use of High Performance Scientific Computing (HPSC). HPSC exploration ranges from nano-clusters to nano-material behavior at mezzo-scale and specific macro-scale products. These novel nano-materials and nano-technologies developed using HPSC can be applied to improve nuclear devices' safety and performance. This chapter explores the use of HPSC.

Cloud Computing

The growth pattern of mobile devices and wireless network technologies leads to revolutionized communication markets with constant advancements (e.g., partly realized 4G and yet-awaited 5G wireless networks, content centric networking, and mobile cloud computing). From the thin-client paradigm of the early computing history, where the bulk of the computing power was on the server side, we have witnessed a rapid transformation to powerful mobile end-user devices with ubiquitous connectivity. The cloud-computing paradigm is now promising to bridge those two ends in order to combine the best of both worlds. This chapter presents: 1) basic concepts of cloud computing in examining the different perspectives of stakeholders in the cloud market, 2) survey of existing approaches and solutions, 3) applications of cloud computing, 4) architectural approaches to cloud computing, including traditional and mobile cloud architectures, and 5) an overview of the related Software-Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization concepts.

Using High Performance Scientific Computing to Accelerate the Discovery and Design of Nuclear Power Applications

Present High Performance Scientific Computing (HPSC) systems are facing strong limitations when full integration from nano-materials to operational system is desired. The HPSC have to be upgraded from the actual designed exa-scale machines probably available after 2015 to even higher computer power and storage capability to yotta-scale in order to simulate systems from nano-scale up to macro scale as a way to greatly improve the safety and performances of the future advanced nuclear power structures. The road from the actual peta-scale systems to yotta-scale computers, which would barely be sufficient for current calculation needs, is difficult and requires new revolutionary ideas in HPSC, and probably the large-scale use of Quantum Supercomputers (QSC) that are now in the development stage.

Overview of Global Supercomputing

In this chapter, a discussion is presented of what a supercomputer really is, as well as of both the top few of the world's fastest supercomputers and the overall top 500 in the world. Discussions are also of cognitive science research using supercomputers for artificial intelligence, architectural classes of supercomputers, and discussion and visualization using tables and graphs of global supercomputing comparisons across different countries. Discussion of supercomputing applications and overview of other book chapters of the entire book are all presented. This chapter serves as an introduction to the entire book and concludes with a summary of the topics of the remaining chapters of this book.

Supercomputers

Supercomputers solve very large-scale complex problems efficiently and expediently – simulating societies, modeling the weather, or mapping genes, etc. Perhaps the most complex task of all is simulating our brains. The physical mapping of organic components to an artificial architecture is daunting, but more so is identifying the mental content referred to as “consciousness.” Creating a human mind is not impossible; what appeared out of reach yesterday is near reality now – a mind embodied in a machine. More profoundly, we may become our own gods, religion merging with science, a “supercomputer brain” encapsulating consciousness, reason, rationality, intelligence, etc. Can we overcome human bias in looking at ourselves, humans creating their own minds, our living as simulations in a virtual world, and computers actually solving social problems? If ultimately these developments amount to creating ourselves as a god, humanity looking at itself through itself, we may not like what we see.

Super Leaders

Present day and projected labor demands forecast a need for minds to comprehend in algorithm in order to leverage computing developments for real world problem resolutions. This chapter focuses not so much on solutions to the preparation of the learners and the scientists, but on the future leadership that will advocate and open doors for the high performance computing community to be funded, supported, and practiced. Supercomputing's sustainable future lies in its future of leadership. Studies over the last ten years identify a shift in leadership as the Baby Boomers enter retirement. The talent pool following the Baby Boomers will shrink in numbers between 2010-2020. Women continue to be under represented in IT leadership. This chapter provides information on the talent pool for supercomputing, discusses leadership and organizational culture as influenced by gender, and explores how a mentoring community fosters leaders for the future.

Role of Supercomputers in Bioinformatics

Due to the involvement of effective and client-friendly components (i.e. supercomputers), rapid data analysis is being accomplished. In Bioinformatics, it is expanding many areas of research such as genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc. Structure-based drug design is one of the major areas of research to cure human malady. This chapter initiates a discussion on supercomputing in sequence analysis with a detailed table summarizing the software and Web-based programs used for sequence analysis. A brief talk on the supercomputing in virtual screening is given where the databases like DOCK, ZINC, EDULISS, etc. are introduced. As the chapter transitions to the next phase, the intricacies of advanced Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship technologies like Fragment-Based 2D QSAR, Multiple-Field 3D QSAR, and Amino Acid-Based Peptide Prediction are put forth in a manner similar to the concept of abstraction. The supercomputing in docking studies is stressed where docking software for Protein-Ligand docking, Protein-Protein docking, and Multi-Protein docking are provided. The chapter ends with the applications of supercomputing in widely used microarray data analysis.