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Informatics activities of the faculty of physics


Overview

Many researchers in the Physics Department work on topics related to Computer Science:

  • Theoretical Particle Physics: High Performance Computing, Computer Architecture, Hardware-aware Algorithms, Computer Algebra, Quantum Computing, Applications of AI in Hadron Physics and Personalized Medicine
  • Theoretical Solid State Physics and Computational Condensed Matter Physics:   Computational Material Science, Solid State Quantum Information Processing, Algorithms for Quantum Simulations
  • Experimental and Applied Physics: Solid State Quantum Information Processing, Solid State Qubits for Quantum Computing, Development of Chips for Solid State Quantum Information Processing
  • Bachelor/Master Course Computational Science
  • IT courses

We closely collaborate with the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) and the Leibniz Computing Center Garching (LRZ), including joint EU projects. Prof. Dirk Pleiter was both a professor in Regensburg and a leading scientist at JSC (now direktor of the PDC CENTER FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING Stockholm)

 


Fields of competence

SFB/TRR-55 „Hadron Physics from Lattice QCD“

(Prof. Dr. Gunnar Bali, Dr. Jacques Bloch, Prof. Dr. Vladimir Braun, PD Dr. Sara Collins, Prof. Dr. Christoph Lehner, Prof. Dr. Dirk Pleiter, Prof. Dr. Andreas Schäfer, Dr. Enno Scholz, Dr. Stefan Solbrig, Prof. Dr. Tilo Wettig)

  • Development of energy-efficient supercomputers in cooperation with companies such as IBM und Intel, e.g., QPACE (Green 500 #1 in 2009 and 2010), iDataCool (prototype for SuperMUC at LRZ), QPACE2 (Green 500 #15 in 2015), QPACE 3 (Green 500 #5 in 2016)
  • Simulation and deployment of new hardware architectures such as Arm-SVE (collaboration with RIKEN, Japan)
  • Development of high-performance simulation software, including contributions to community libraries such as Grid (collaboration with Brookhaven National Lab)
  • Development of computer algebra systems
  • Operation of own HPC resources (about 2.5 PetaFlop/s)
  • Management and analysis of large datasets (currently about 4 PetaByte)

SFB 631 (2003-2015) „Solid State Quantum Information Processing“

(Prof. Dr. Milena Grifoni, PD Dr. Andreas Hüttel, Prof. Dr. Klaus Richter, Prof. Dr. Christoph Strunk, Prof. Dr. John Schliemann, Prof. Dr. Dominique Bougeard)

  • Development of physical concepts for quantum computing and quantum algorithms
  • Theory and experiments for superconducting and spin-based quantum bits
  • Investigation of the material-science and technological foundations of solid state quantum information processing

SFB 1277 „Emergent Relativistic Effects in Condensed Matter: From Fundamental Aspects to Electronic Functionality“

(all professors and junior research group leaders in condensed matter physics)

  • Development of simulation software and its application in nanoscale materials
  • Development of hybrid-material systems as a basis for topological quantum computing
  • Investigation of new classes of materials with functionality for future electronics

DFG project on fault-tolerant quantum computing in silicon 28

(Prof. Dr. Dominique Bougeard)

Project in the Broad Agency Program of the US government on „Qubits in Silicon“

(Prof. Dr. Dominique Bougeard)

BMBF project "Theoretical investigation of superconductivity based qubits and circuits with ultrastrong light matter interaction"

(Prof. Dr. Milena Grifoni, in the framework of the EU Quantera Consortium "Superconductivity based quantum technologies with ultrastrong light matter interaction" (SiUCs))

Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy (RUN)

(Professors from physics, biology and chemistry)

  • Development of massively parallel algorithms for real-time analysis of ultrafast microscopy films
  • High-performance image and pattern recognition and data mining in multidimensional microscopy data
  • Development of machine-learning strategies for the control of ultrafast microscopes


Participation in international Computer Science projects

Members of the Physics Department participate in the following international Computer Science projects (typically as coordinator or project leader):

  • European Processor Initiative (EPI) https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu: Project to develop a family of European processors for HPC and other applications
  • EXA2PRO https://exa2pro.eu: European project to develop a new programming environment for future Exascale architectures based on compute accelerators such as GPUs or FPGAs
  • ExaNoDe http://exanode.eu: European project to develop a new HPC compute-node architecture based on a 3-dimensional integration concept of chiplets on active interposers
  • Human Brain Project (HBP) https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en: European flagship project to develop an infrastructure for leading researchers in the fields of neurosciences, computing and neuromedicine
  • Advanced Computing Architectures (ACA): Project to develop neuromorphic systems to study neuroscientific questions, which aims to simulate natural-density networks at much higher speeds than would be possible with conventional computer architectures
  • Huawei-Jülich Collaboration: Industry collaboration to develop and evaluate new computing technologies based on Arm processors
  • ICEI/Fenix https://fenix-ri.eu: European project to create a federated HPC and cloud infrastructure and develop all necessary services, e.g., in AI, data management, scheduling
  • Maestro https://www.maestro-data.eu: European project to develop middleware for data and storage-oriented programming of Exascale computers, e.g., for simulations in the fields of weather forecast, earth sciences, material sciences
  • Centre of Excellence “Materials design at the Exascale” (MaX2) http://www.max-centre.eu: European competence center for material science, which aims to enable applications from this field for future Exascale computers and to create knowledge for the codesign of such computers
  • MB2020 https://www.montblanc-project.eu: European project to develop components for future processors optimized for Big Data and HPC
  • NVIDIA Application Lab at Jülich: Industry collaboration with focus on porting applications to GPU-accelerated supercomputers
  • Power Acceleration and Design Centre (PADC): Industry collaboration with IBM and NVIDIA in the context of the OpenPOWER Foundation to develop technology based on the POWER processor
  • PPI4HPC https://ppi4hpc.eu: European project to create innovative solutions for future supercomputers for scientific use in Europe
  • PRACE PCP http://www.prace-ri.eu: Pre-commercial procurement for R&D services to develop energy-efficient HPC architectures for future European supercomputers
  • SAGE2 http://www.sagestorage.eu: European project to develop a new object store optimized for HPC and Big Data
  • sparse2big http://www.fz-juelich.de/ias/jsc/EN/Research/Projects/_projects/sparse2big.html: Helmholtz Incubator project for the development of methods and techniques for the processing of large datasets with many variables, but unknown, missing or noisy data points, which occur, e.g., in genomics
  • STIMULATE http://stimulate-ejd.eu: European network for the training of PhD students in research areas such as lattice QCD, CFD/turbulence and biology with emphasis on HPC and Data Science
  • EuroPLEx http://europlex.unipr.it/: European network for the training of PhD students in particle physics, lattice field theory and extreme computing
  • KONWIHR https://blogs.fau.de/konwihr: Simulation software for cancer progression models on multi-/many-core systems
  • Research project at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) for the efficient preparation of states in quantum field theories on noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) hardware
  • Development of optimized HPC strategies: KNL–Omni-Path cluster and Omni-Path Whitepaper with Intel


The members of the Physics Department acquire large amounts of computing time at national and international supercomputing centers through competitive grants:

  • In 2019, over 1 billion core hours on US/Japan leadership class machines at Argonne National Laboratory (US), Brookhaven National Laboratory (US), Fermilab (US), Jefferson Laboratory (US), Joint Center for Advanced High Performance Computing (Japan), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US), Texas Advanced Computing Center (US). In previous years, 500 million core hours per year on average.
  • In 2014-2018, over 600 million core hours at Jülich Supercomputing Center (JSC) and Leibniz Rechenzentrum Garching (LRZ).


Faculty of Physics - Research

Universitätsstrasse 31
D-93051 Regensburg


Phone. +49 941 943 2023


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