Seminar Announcement

Software for PDE Optimization

Kevin Long
Computational Sciences and Mathematics Research
Sandia National Labs

Wednesday, October 27, 1999
2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Bldg. 921, Room 137

Numerical optimization is useful as a systematic tool for improvement of design, parameter estimation, or control. Unfortunately it is often underutilized in practice because of the difficulty in connecting the best optimization algorithms with the best simulation codes. I will describe two software research and development projects intended to improve the link between optimization technology and simulation codes. The Integrated Design, Exploration, and Analysis (IDEA) project is a software system that enables analysis services such as optimization and DACE on large-scale simulation codes in a distributed computing enviroment. A limited prototype which supports DACE has been released to alpha customers; we are currently designing a production system. Many high-performance PDE optimization algorithms impose requirements upon the PDE solver that are not met by legacy codes or even by most state-of-the-art PDE codes. We are beginning a project to enhance several SNL PDE codes to become optimization-aware; in the course of that project we hope to develop an API for interaction between PDE and optimization codes that will guide future PDE code development.

This seminar is hosted by the Computational Sciences and Mathematics Research Department at Sandia National Labs in Livermore, CA. For more information on this or other events, visit http://csmr.ca.sandia.gov/news.html. Visitors from outside Sandia require advance arrangements in order to attend. For more information, please contact the CSMR office management assistant Doretha Smith at dahall@sandia.gov or (925) 294-4630.