Advanced Computing, Mathematics and Data
Newsmakers

April 2018

Dunning Discusses NWChemEx for Let's Talk Exascale Podcast

In a new episode of the Exascale Computing Project’s Let’s Talk Exascale podcast, Thom Dunning, a Battelle Fellow at the Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing, a joint endeavor of the University of Washington and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, discussed the importance of understanding molecular processes and how work on the ECP’s NWChemEx project aims to improve how scientists study molecular systems. Dunning, who leads the NWChemEx project, also is a research professor in UW’s chemistry department.

Thom Dunning

NWChemEx is enhancing the popular, PNNL-developed computational chemistry code, NWChem, to improve its scalability, performance, extensibility, and portability for use on future exascale computing systems.

According to Dunning, the emphasis on developing hardware and software simultaneously for exascale systems “is a hallmark of ECP that distinguishes it from almost all of the other major high-performance computing activities around the world.”

For more about how NWChemEx will change molecular modeling, tune into the podcast, “Getting Ready to Model Molecular Properties at Exascale with NWChemEx.”

About ECP
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project is responsible for developing the strategy, aligning the resources, and conducting the R&D necessary to achieve the nation’s imperative of delivering exascale computing by 2021. ECP’s mission is to ensure all the necessary pieces are in place for the first exascale systems—an ecosystem that includes mission critical applications, software stack, hardware architecture, advanced system engineering and hardware components to enable fully functional, capable exascale computing environments critical to national security, scientific discovery, and a strong U.S. economy.

The ECP is a collaborative project of two DOE organizations: the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration.