A team of General Atomics scientists collaborated with the San Diego Supercomputing Center and Canada-based technology company Drizti to create a process for simulating fusion reactor plasma in a cloud environment.
General Atomics said Monday the prototyping effort combined its CGYRO physics code with Microsoft's Azure platform and Drizti’s HPCBOX supercomputing as a service.
As part of the project, Drizti built a push-button function inside the Canadian company's technology to support fusion research work. The HPCBOX tool is designed to provide an HPC setup that includes Azure’s processing and networking features.
General Atomics noted that it is examining the feasibility of transitioning medium-scale fusion plasma simulations to the cloud-based supercomputing platform.
The San Diego-based energy and defense company hopes the approach it developed with SDSC and Drizti could help simplify the fusion reactor design process.
University of California San Diego established SDSC in 1985 under a cooperative agreement with General Atomics and the National Science Foundation.