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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Glossary." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
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Page 141
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Glossary." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
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Page 142

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Appendix C Glossary Clade Group of species Exascale Computing at quintillions of flops per second Giant Molecular Cloud A large cloud of molecular gas and small solid particles from which new generations of stars form Heuristic Algorithm based on one or more rules of thumb rather than on a theoretical model Magnetohydrodynamics Study of the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids Morphology External character of an organism Multicore Pertaining to a computer chip with multiple processing units on it, or a com- puter that includes such chips Ontology Set of defined concepts that characterize a domain Orographic Caused by airflow over hills or mountains Petaflop Quadrillion floating point operations Petascale Computing at quadrillions of flops per second Phenotype Observable characteristics of an individual 141

142 THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF HIGH-END CAPABILITY COMPUTING Phylogenetics Relationships of groups of organisms as reflected by their evolutionary history Stiff differential equations Coupled differential equations that include some terms that lead to rapid variations; they must be handled with special solvers to avoid instabilities Symplectic integrators Discretizations that have a Hamiltonian structure analogous to that of the dynamics being approximated Teraflop Trillion floating point operations Terascale Computing at trillions of flops per second

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Many federal funding requests for more advanced computer resources assume implicitly that greater computing power creates opportunities for advancement in science and engineering. This has often been a good assumption. Given stringent pressures on the federal budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) are seeking an improved approach to the formulation and review of requests from the agencies for new computing funds.

This book examines, for four illustrative fields of science and engineering, how one can start with an understanding of their major challenges and discern how progress against those challenges depends on high-end capability computing (HECC). The four fields covered are:

  1. atmospheric science
  2. astrophysics
  3. chemical separations
  4. evolutionary biology

This book finds that all four of these fields are critically dependent on HECC, but in different ways. The book characterizes the components that combine to enable new advances in computational science and engineering and identifies aspects that apply to multiple fields.

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