Towards heterogeneous multi-scale computing on large scale parallel supercomputers

New applications that can exploit emerging exascale computing resources efficiently, while providing meaningful scientific results, are eagerly anticipated. Multi-scale models, especially multi-scale applications, will assuredly run at the exascale. We have established that a class of multi-scale applications implementing the heterogeneous multi-scale model follows, a heterogeneous multi-scale computing (HMC) pattern, which typically features a macroscopic model synchronising numerous independent microscopic model simulations. Consequently, communication between microscopic simulations is limited. Furthermore, a surrogate model can often be introduced between macro-scale and micro-scale models to interpolate required data from previously computed micro-scale simulations, thereby substantially reducing the number of micro-scale simulations. Nonetheless, HMC applications, though versatile, remain constrained by load balancing issues. We discuss two main issues: the a priori unknown and variable execution time of microscopic simulations, and the dynamic number of micro-scale simulations required. We tackle execution time variability using a pilot job mechanism to handle internal queuing and multiple sub-model execution on large-scale supercomputers, together with a data-informed execution time prediction model. To dynamically select the number of micro-scale simulations, the HMC pattern automatically detects and identifies three surrogate model phases that help control the available and used core amount. After relevant phase detection and micro-scale simulation scheduling, any idle cores can be used for surrogate model update or for processor release back to the system. We demonstrate HMC performance by testing it on two representative multi-scale applications. We conclude that, considering the subtle interplay between the macroscale model, surrogate models and micro-scale simulations, HMC provides a promising path towards exascale for many multiscale applications.