Preparing Nuclear Astrophysics for Exascale

TL;DR

This paper discusses adapting nuclear astrophysics simulation codes for exascale supercomputers, enabling more detailed modeling of astrophysical explosions like supernovae and X-ray bursts.

Contribution

It details the modifications made to existing codes to run efficiently on exascale systems and explores new scientific possibilities enabled by these advancements.

Findings

Codes now compatible with exascale architectures.

Enhanced resolution allows more detailed astrophysical simulations.

Potential for new scientific discoveries with exascale computing.

Abstract

Astrophysical explosions such as supernovae are fascinating events that require sophisticated algorithms and substantial computational power to model. Castro and MAESTROeX are nuclear astrophysics codes that simulate thermonuclear fusion in the context of supernovae and X-ray bursts. Examining these nuclear burning processes using high resolution simulations is critical for understanding how these astrophysical explosions occur. In this paper we describe the changes that have been made to these codes to transform them from standard MPI + OpenMP codes targeted at petascale CPU-based systems into a form compatible with the pre-exascale systems now online and the exascale systems coming soon. We then discuss what new science is possible to run on systems such as Summit and Perlmutter that could not have been achieved on the previous generation of supercomputers.