Better Scientific Productivity through Better Scientific Software: The IDEAS Report

The US Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) provides a unique opportunity to advance computational science through an accelerated growth phase in extreme-scale computing. However, disruptive changes in computer architectures and the complexities of tackling new frontiers in extreme-scale modeling, simulation, and analysis present daunting challenges to the productivity of software developers and the sustainability of software artifacts.

A newly released report introduces work by the IDEAS project within ECP (called IDEAS-ECP) to foster and advance software productivity and sustainability for extreme-scale computational science, as a key aspect of improving overall scientific productivity. The report explains the IDEAS approach, outcomes, and impact of work (in partnership with the ECP and broader computational science community).

Target readers are all those who care about the quality and integrity of scientific discoveries based on simulation and analysis. While the difficulties of extreme-scale computing intensify software challenges, issues are relevant across all computing scales, given universal increases in complexity and the need to ensure the trustworthiness of computational results.

The report may be obtained from the ECP website.