AEROSPACE

By Steve Fisher, Editor In Chief -- One area of supercomputing that is really not often discussed is that of geophysical applications and issues. So, when Cray announced an agreement with Alliant Geophysical, a privately held seismic solutions provider, earlier this month, we at Supercomputing Online wanted to learn more. The following are the collective answers of George Stephenson, head of petroleum industry sales for Cray Inc., and Craig Limbaugh, president of Alliant Geophysical. Supercomputing: Please tell the readers a bit about the recently announced agreement between Cray and Alliant Geophysical. STEPHENSON/LIMBAUGH: Cray Inc. delivered a T3E computer to Alliant Geophysical to process seismic data. Alliant ported several of their cutting edge seismic imaging algorithms to the Cray computers and will make these codes available to Cray customers. Supercomputing: If you would, please tell us about Alliant's 3DWAVE software? STEPHENSON/LIMBAUGH: 3DWAVE is a three-dimensional pre-stack depth migration code with finite difference as the mathematical solution. The most common solution today is Kirchhoff. The finite difference method is more accurate but requires more compute power. The results to date are very exciting and are the fundamental reason Cray and Alliant have entered this relationship in the first place. Supercomputing: Please explain the difference between the shot-record finite difference method of improving the odds of companies finding oil and the more established Kirchhoff method. STEPHENSON/LIMBAUGH: The finite difference method does not rely on the traveltime raytracing step of Kirchhoff but rather a wave equation solution that minimizes the distortion inherent in ray tracing. This allows much greater accuracy, particularly in areas of complex geology where the big oil exploration opportunities are the most lucrative. It's like having the first scope on a high powered rifle. Supercomputing: How did the initial software porting go? Any specific challenges and how they were overcome you'd care to comment on? STEPHENSON/LIMBAUGH: All of the Alliant software was designed with distributed memory computers in mind, and is written exclusively with industry standard Fortran, C and MPI (Message Passing Interface) routines. The porting is done, optimization is in progress. Supercomputing: What are the primary benefits users (oil companies) will realize from Alliant's software and Cray's T3E? STEPHENSON/LIMBAUGH: Full 3-D seismic imaging solutions have primarily been restricted to the big oil companies. Alliant is providing this technology to all oil companies that want superior, timely and cost effective solutions. Further, this technology is available to users of Cray computers today. Alliant is committed to providing this technology on future generations of Cray-class machines. This is exciting to us because this gives our current clients a solution today and leading edge solutions for tomorrow. We'll save the rest of the story for the next press release. Oil companies will be able to have surveys processed at Alliant Geophysical with faster turn around. Oil companies with Cray computers will be able to license Alliant Geophysical code and will not need to develop the code themselves. Supercomputing: Why is the T3E better suited to this type of software than the offerings of Cray competitors? STEPHENSON/LIMBAUGH: The T3E is the best supercomputer in the world. Cray competitors rate the speed of their computers in peak theoretical performance and they are able to sustain only a small percent of the number that they publish. The T3E provides the performance, I/O, stability and scalability required for this class of solution. Supercomputing: Is there anything else you'd like to add? STEPHENSON/LIMBAUGH: More CPUs. ---------- Supercomputing Online wishes to thank Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Limbaugh for their time and insights. ----------