Computational Research Division

The Computational Research Division (CRD) at Berkeley Lab is home to about 150 researchers in areas such as applied mathematics, computer science, and computational sciences. CRD comprises two departments, the High Performance Computing Research Department and the Distributed Systems Department. It also manages several SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) programs. SciDAC is the first federally funded program that aims at implementing the CSE vision of bringing together applications scientists with mathematicians and computer scientists to solve large computational science problems.

• The High Performance Computing Research Department (HPCRD) addresses long-term research and development questions in HPC. With more than 125 staff and expertise in computer science, computational science, and applied mathematics, HPCRD can provide additional resources and talent for the advanced development needs of the new CSE center and for focused high-end support of the application areas.

• The Advanced Computing for Science Department (ACS) seeks to allow scientists to address complex and large-scale computing and data analysis problems beyond what is possible today. ACS is developing software components which will operate in a distributed environment. We are addressing several research areas: (1) providing tools to facilitate Grid Services; (2) building prototype tools that allow us to explore models of informal collaboration among geographically remote researchers; (3) techniques for assuring the security of such distributed applications and to provide site security while permitting access by a wide variety of remote applications; and (4) developing customized tools and support for specific scientific collaborations.

• SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) centers: Berkeley Lab is the leader of four SciDAC centers and participates in eighteen other SciDAC projects. The new CSE center will leverage the activities of these projects, in particular the Applied Partial Differential Equations Center (APDEC) and the Performance Evaluation Research Institute (PERI), two of SciDAC’s Integrated Software Infrastructure Centers.