DHPA: A New Distributed High Performance Architecture for Space Environment Modeling and Simulation

Space environment is an indispensable part of the earth environment, but the extreme space weather can bring disasters to human life. The simulation and prediction of complex space environment system using high performance computer is a promising way to solve the problem. Hardware platform is not adequate, a robust software platform is necessary in that it can deal with the complexity of simulation, reduce the cost, and finally avoid software crisis. The center for space environment modeling (CSEM) at the University of Michigan has developed the SWMF (space weather modeling framework), but it still has some limitations on interoperation of models, reuse of legacy codes, code maintenance, and distributed computing. This paper presents a new space environment system modeling framework, DHPA (distributed high performance architecture for space environment modeling and simulation). Adopting CCA (common component architecture) specifications, newly proposed by a consortium of university and national laboratory researchers to introduce software engineering into large-scale scientific computing field, combining service-oriented design ideas, DHPA may be a solution to the problems existed in SWMF, and thus provide scientists with a virtual platform to conduct the collaborative working on physical modeling, model integration, code reuse, management, and visualization, and to realize prediction for space weather.