Galaxy Simulations in the Era of Exascale

25 Sept 2024

Speaker: Evan Schneider (University of Pittsburgh)

Abstract:

Recent years have witnessed enormous gains in the complexity of astrophysics simulations, and the computational power of the machines that run them. Only a couple decades ago, models of galaxy formation and evolution employed calculations with a few million cells or particles -- now those numbers typically exceed billions. With the advent of modern, GPU-based machines, such as the exascale-breaking Frontier at Oak Ridge National Lab, a new opportunity arises to increase the resolution of simulations by orders-of-magnitude more... provided our software can keep up. In this talk, I will describe our work to prepare the GPU-native astrophysics code Cholla to run trillion-cell galaxy simulations on Frontier. With ~parsec-scale resolution throughout the domain, these simulations are able to self-consistently capture the cycle of star formation, supernovae, and outflows on the scales of our own Milky Way, allowing us to probe new regimes of resolved galaxy evolution and answer long-standing questions about the nature of our Galaxy.