SDSC-Led Research Team Shatters Two-Second Barrier, Named Finalists for Gordon Bell Prize at SC08

A team led by researchers at SDSC successfully completed record-setting, petascale-level simulations of the earth’s inner structure, paving the way for seismologists to model seismic wave propagations at frequencies of just over one second – the same frequencies that occur in nature. The latest supercomputer simulations, led by SDSC researcher Laura Carrington, focused on overcoming a key challenge in global seismology: modeling the propagation of seismic waves with frequencies as small as one second. The team broke the previous record set in 2003, which achieved frequencies of 3.5 seconds. The SDSC team includes researchers from the California Institute of Technology; Université de Pau and INRIA, France; and the Institut Universitaire de France, France.