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DSSE Researcher Deploys VERAView and VERARun Applications at INL, Presents to Users Group

Achievement

Ronald Lee, Data System Sciences and Engineering senior researcher, working with the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) as a software developer, recently deployed VERAView and VERARun on Idaho National Laboratory (INL) High Performance Computing (HPC) resources for VERA training and use. The training was held February 13 to 15, 2019, for industry users. Lee installed VERAView on hpcview.inl.gov, and VERARun on the lemhi1.hpc.inl.gov, falcon1.inl.gov, and falcon2.inl.gov clusters.

Overview

VERAView is a graphical user interface for visualization and engineering analyses of output data from VERA. Implemented in Python, it provides instantaneous 2D and 3D images, 1D plots, and alpha-numeric data from VERA multi-physics simulations. VERAView was developed in 2015 by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory CASL group to analyze VERA-CS output and resulted in an extensible, flexible, and easily maintained product.

 

Following configuration and testing for the HPC environment, VERAView Version 2.4.3 was deployed on hpcview.inl.gov for use by VERA industry users and to train attendees in viewing results of VERA jobs run on INL HPC clusters. As part of the Version 2.4.3 rollout, Lee built installers for three platforms (i.e., Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux) and wrote the supporting instructions. Windows constitutes the most commonly used platform; however, the HPC environment at INL is Linux-based and provides users with the capacity needed to expediently process VERA files that sometimes exceed 50 GB. Lee and another CASL team member, Andrew Godfrey, also gave a presentation on VERAView at the VERA Users Group Meeting on February 11, 2019.

 

VERARun is a command-line utility for creating and submitting VERA jobs on a cluster. It reads a VERAInput file and creates (and optionally submits) a Portable Batch System job script. Job submission parameters are determined from model resource requirements and machine characteristics (e.g., the number of nodes, sockets per node, processors per socket, amount of memory per node). VERARun was installed on lemhi.hpc.inl.gov, falcon1.inl.gov, and falcon2.inl.gov for training and subsequent use by VERA users.

 

CASL is a U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub, and the VERA set of applications is used for light water reactor modeling.

Last Updated: January 15, 2021 - 2:04 pm