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takyon writes:

Ensuring there are applications ready to churn out useful science when the first U.S. exascale computers arrive in the 2021-2023 timeframe is Doug Kothe's job. No pressure. He's not alone, of course. The U.S. Exascale Computing Project (ECP) is a complicated effort with many interrelated parts and contributors, all necessary for success. Yet Kothe's job as director of application development is one of the more visible and daunting and perhaps best described by his boss, Paul Messina, ECP director.

"We think of 50 times [current] performance on applications [as the exascale measure of merit], unfortunately there's a kink in this," said Messina. "The kink is people won't be running today's jobs in these exascale systems. We want exascale systems to do things we can't do today and we need to figure out a way to quantify that. In some cases it will be relatively easy – just achieving much greater resolutions – but in many cases it will be enabling additional physics to more faithfully represent the phenomena. We want to focus on measuring every capable exascale system based on full applications tackling real problems compared to what they can do today."

[...] By way of review, ECP is a collaborative effort of two Department of Energy organizations—the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Six applications areas have been singled out: national security; energy security, economic security, scientific discovery; earth science; and health care. In terms of app-dev, that's translated into 21 Science & Energy application projects, 3 NNSA application projects, and 1 DOE / NIH application project (precision medicine for cancer).

Source: https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/05/29/doug-kothe-race-build-exascale-applications/

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