Getting ready for petaflop capacities and beyond: a utility perspective

Abstract

Abstract. Why should EDF, the leading producer and marketer of electricity in Europe, start adding teraflops to its terawatt-hours and become involved in high-performance computing (HPC)? In this paper we answer this question through examples of major opportunities that HPC brings to our business today and, we hope well into the future of petaflop and exaflop computing. Five cases are presented dealing with nondestructive testing, nuclear fuel management, mechanical behavior ofnuclear fuel assemblies, water management, and energy management. For each case we show the benefits brought by HPC, describe the current level of numerical simulation performance, and discuss the perspectives for future steps. We also present the general background that explains why EDF is moving to this technology and briefly comment on the development of user-oriented simulation platforms.