Sumathi Lakshmiranganatha

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP)’s Simplified Interface to Complex Memories (SICM) effort focuses on developing universal interfaces for discovering, managing, and sharing data across complex memory hierarchies. These facilitate the exploitation of emerging memory technologies and support precise control over their various trade-offs such as high-bandwidth versus low-latency, persistent versus ephemeral, high-capacity versus low-capacity, and near-CPU versus near-GPU. SICM comprises three interrelated components: a low-level interface, a high-level interface, and a persistent-heap interface. The low-level SICM interface is intended for system and run-time developers as well as expert application developers who prefer full control of the memory objects used within their application. The high-level SICM interface builds upon the low-level interface, employing application-level profiling and analysis to optimize data management for complex memory hierarchies. The persistent-heap interface provides applications with a persistent memory allocator that can allocate custom C++ data structures in both block-storage and byte-addressable persistent memories.

With recent advances in deep learning and large-scale computing, learning-based controls have become increasingly attractive for complex physical systems. Consequently, developing generalized learning-based control software that takes into account the next generation of computing architectures is paramount. Specifically, for the case of complex control, we present the Easily eXtendable Architecture for Reinforcement Learning (EXARL), which aims to support various scientific applications seeking to leverage reinforcement learning (RL) on exascale computing architectures. We demonstrate the efficacy and performance of the EXARL library for the scientific use case of designing a complex control policy to stabilize a power system after experiencing a fault. We use a parallel augmented random search method developed within EXARL and present its preliminary validation and performance stabilization of a fault for the IEEE 39-bus system.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information