Banquet and Invited Speech Why Peta-Scale is Different: An Ecosystem Approach to Predictive Scientific and Engineering Simulation

With the recent advent of 100s of teraFLOP/s-scale simulations capability at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and other sites, it has become clear that the scientific method has changed. This transition has taken us from theory and experiment to theory and experiment being tightly integrated by simulation. With the advent of peta-scale simulations on the horizon it is appropriate to take stock of the recent advances and to look forward to the coming wave of future systems. In this talk we focus on some areas of science that open up with peta-scale systems and how this is VERY different from the science one can accomplish with a single workstation (giga-scale simulation). In actual fact, the science enabled by tera-scale and peta-scale systems require a whole new approach to the scientific method. One of the things we are starting to realize being at the leading edge of applying this new technology, is that with the coming onset of peta-scale simulations (systems, visualization, and applications) is that we may be headed for huge scientific breakthroughs enabled