Recently, a large group of experts led by a team from the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego managed to perform peta-scale simulations of the internal structure of the planet, breaking various records and barriers in the process. This is supposed to enable seismology experts to devise seismic models of wave propagation at frequencies of a wee bit over a second, similar to those going on in nature.

The team was the runner-up in the yearly competition for a Gordon Bell prize which is handed for breakthrough feats achieved by using high-performance computing software. The simulation broke the 2 second barrier while setting a new record of 1.15 seconds wave propagation frequency - the shortest ever obtained and definitely a tough figure to dethrone. It would be pointless to set new record lows, since wave frequencies shorter than one second don't propagate across the whole planet.

 

"In breaking the two-second barrier, we were able to model wave propagation clear through the Earth to more accurately predict its structure," explained Laura Carrington, leader of the simulation from the Performance Modeling and Characterization (PMaC) laboratory at SDSC, quoted by Eurekalert. "More significantly, by achieving a frequency just above one second, we were able to duplicate the same frequencies that occur in nature, providing an unprecedented level of resolution that will greatly enhance our understanding of the physics and chemistry of the Earth's interior."

 

The "Jaguar" computer system used in the application, belonging to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), was comprised of 149,784 computer cores which yielded a computing power of 161 teraflops. This is also the first application used in seismic wave simulation to overcome the barrier of 160 teraflops. This amount of a teraflop (a trillion calculations per second) of computing power is the equivalent of a human spending 30,000 years performing calculations on a hand-held device.