When NETL’s Dirk Van Essendelft first met with leaders of the American artificial intelligence company Cerebras Systems Inc. in October 2019, he quickly realized the potential of the company’s groundbreaking Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) to revolutionize how the Lab modeled energy systems.
More than five years later, the NETL-Cerebras collaboration has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments, several of which were featured during the Lab’s 25th anniversary poster event.
“Right from the beginning, we saw that the WSE was a much faster computational tool — hundreds of times faster — than the traditional high-performance computer hardware we were using to run our computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software,” Van Essendelft said. “Furthermore, it was achieving these speeds while consuming a fraction of the energy compared to traditional processing units. Based on these initial promising results, we formed a partnership that is still yielding powerful results today.”
NETL has been modeling complex energy systems for more than three decades with its renowned Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges (MFiX), a versatile toolset for understanding the behavior and characterizing the performance of energy conversion processes. CFD software such as MFiX accelerates reactor development, reduces costs, optimizes performance and reduces design risk. The WSE could make all of this happen faster and with far less energy.
“We’ve accomplished much in the last five years,” Van Essendelft said. “From the development of a simple user interface that allows researchers to easily program the WSE to setting a world record for speed in several critical models, we’re seeing massive gains in compute speed in an extremely energy efficient manner. We also now have a very capable library to solve a variety of scientific problems related to materials and subsurface modeling in addition to CFD.”
Research using the WSE continues, and Van Essendelft and his team continue to pioneer applications of national importance that require increasingly advanced computing to model complex phenomena and manage extensive data. They plan to continue using the unique capabilities of the WSE to support technologies that will develop American energy technologies and help promote the use of the nation’s abundant, reliable, affordable, domestic energy resources.
NETL is a DOE national laboratory dedicated to advancing the nation’s energy future by creating innovative solutions that strengthen the security, affordability and reliability of energy systems and natural resources. With laboratories in Albany, Oregon; Morgantown, West Virginia; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, NETL creates advanced energy technologies that support DOE’s mission while fostering collaborations that will lead to a resilient and abundant energy future for the nation.