Lattice QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) studies the fundamental theory of the strong interactions numerically and has been at the forefront of HPC since the 1980s.

Lattice QCD codes have been ported to most HPC architectures and typically obtain high sustained performance due to the regularity and predictability of the code. However, the efficient exploitation of recent many-core architectures continues to remain a challenge, in particular due to limitations in memory bandwidth and strong scalability.

Developments in DEEP-ER

The DEEP/-ER architecture, which is using Intel MIC compute nodes and a powerful interconnect, is an excellent testbed to address this challenge for lattice QCD. Resiliency issues arise for lattice QCD in the gauge field generation phase, while I/O becomes important in the analysis phase. Therefore both of these questions can be addressed as well.