Of the six finalists of the 2013 Gordon Bell Prize, four used Titan to realize their simulations. But statistics weren’t consulted for the attribution: the distinction was awarded to a team of scientists at ETH Zurich and IBM Research, in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), for their work on cavitation carried out on Sequoia, LLNL’s IBM BlueGene/Q.

The experiment conducted by Petros Koumoutsakos and his colleagues resolved unique phenomena associated with clouds of collapsing bubbles. This condition occurs when vapor bubbles formed in a liquid collapse due to changes in pressure. The successful effort employed 13 trillion cells and 6.4 million threads, resulting in a 14.4 Pflops simulation (approx. 73% of the machine’s peak power) that resolved 15,000 bubbles and achieved a 20-fold reduction in time to solution over previous research. The results will help improve the design of combustion engines and hydraulic turbines. They should also positively impact a number of therapeutic approaches to cancer. Kudos to the team, and also to the other finalists whose selection will certainly promote their career.