The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Workshop: ISAV23: In Situ Infrastructures for Enabling Extreme-Scale Analysis and Visualization
Authors: Andres Sewell (Utah State University, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)); Victor A. Mateevitsi (Argonne National Laboratory); Cyrus Harrison and Nicole Marsaglia (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory); Thomas Marrinan (University of St. Thomas, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)); Steve Petruzza (Utah State University); Silvio Rizzi (Argonne National Laboratory); Joseph A. Insley (Argonne National Laboratory, Northern Illinois University); and Michael E. Papka (Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago)
Abstract: Automated computational steering is used to automatically guide simulations toward productive states by combining data analysis with predefined control flow paths. Interactive computational steering achieves a similar goal, but by relying on manual human intervention instead. Existing in situ libraries are capable of fulfilling some computational steering use cases, but not all of them. This paper presents a general purpose interface for instrumenting existing simulation codes with interactive computational steering capabilities. Common use cases are presented, summarized from informal interviews held with 7 research scientists that use large-scale simulations in their work. Preliminary support for bidirectional communication via simulation callbacks and shell commands has been implemented in Ascent, a software library which provides simulations with in situ analysis and visualization infrastructure. Finally, a proof of concept instrumentation is provided, demonstrating that the proposed interface is sufficiently flexible to enable any interactive computational steering use case within Ascent-instrumented simulations.