Intelligent LightT Announces KombyneT an HPC Efficiency Multiplier

Intelligent Light announced the creation of KombyneT an innovative new SaaS
High Performance Computing (HPC) workflow tool, initially developed for
customers in the defense, automotive, aerospace industries and academic
research. It allows users to subscribe to a range of workflow solutions for
HPC CFD jobs, from on-the-fly extract generation and rendering to simulation
steering. Interactive monitoring and control is also available, all with
minimal simulation disruption and no reliance on VTK. The need for large
files is eliminated via extract workflows and real-time visualization.

“Over the past decade, the convergence of accessible HPC and high-fidelity
simulation has created a bottleneck in analysis workflows: writing, managing
and reading very large files. Intelligent Light has provided in situ
solutions via VisIt/Libsim used to access information directly from the
memory of the running solver code,” said Steve M. Legensky, President and
CTO of Intelligent Light. Steve continued, “Based on our experience and
customer input, we built KombyneT from the ground up to simplify the
integration into solver codes and minimize the runtime impact on memory and
performance via true ‘in transit’ operation.”

An in transit workflow uses a separate process, called an Endpoint that
quickly receives data from the solver and performs visualization and
analysis without interfering with the running solver. The Endpoint can
directly output extracts such as cutting planes, obtain point samples for
data science, render images, and it can act as a bridge to popular
visualization codes such as FieldView, VisIt and ParaView, enabling
interactive visualization without stopping the solver code. KombyneT is the
first commercially supported product that provides full in situ and in
transit post-processing, rendering and data science sampling.

Intelligent Light’s Vice President of Research and Development, Dr. Earl
P.N. Duque, has been supporting a data science project, using modal and
frequency analysis to characterize transonic ‘cylinder in crossflow’
physics, using NASA’s OVERFLOW2 solver, instrumented with KombyneT on the
Department of Energy Cori supercomputer. According to Dr. Duque, “This study
required data at high frequency, essentially every solver time step. Using
the standard I/O pipelines in OVERFLOW2 would have required excessive wall
clock time. KombyneT was able to efficiently write the solution extracts to
disk in various data formats that could be used by data analysis tools
(Matlab) and visualization tools (VisIt, FieldView, ParaView).”

Installation is extremely easy for KombyneT using prebuilt modules for
OVERFLOW2, Hydra, PyFR, OpenFOAM, and more coming every day. For other CFD
solvers, a small adapter library is used to link KombyneT into the solver.
KombyneT provides native APIs in FORTRAN, C/C++ and Python and is scalable
via MPI. In batch operation, a simple parameter datafile sets up the
functions to be performed during simulation.

KombyneT comes in two flavors: KombyneT and KombyneT Lite and is supplied
via an ‘enterprise open source’ site subscription, with no limit in the
number of runtime instances. KombyneT Lite is available at no-cost for
non-commercial use, with pricing for commercial use based on site size.
Availability: Q4-2021. For more information, see kombyne.net and contact
Raymond Boyd, rab@ilight.com, (203) 215-6396 mobile.

About Intelligent LightT – Founded in 1984, Intelligent LightT developed
FieldView which became one of the world’s leading software tools for
visualization and post-processing of CFD. In October 2019, Intelligent
LightT spun-off FieldView into an entity focused on the packaged software
business (FieldView CFD, Inc.) which now allows Intelligent LightT to focus
on subscription-based HPC and digital twin products. The company also
participates in contracted R&D efforts. Development of VisIt PrimeT and
KombyneT was supported by the US Department of Energy via grants
DE-SC0007548 and DE-SC0018633, respectively.

KombyneT and Intelligent LightT are trademarks of JMSI inc.