Purdue leads center to simulate behavior of micro-electromechanic...(em called MEMOSA to accurately model the...)

In addition to multiscale considerations, another complicating factor is that device operation involves the interaction of mechanical, electrical and thermal factors. The devices are made of various types of materials, which also have to be incorporated into simulations.

Creating the simulations will require the expertise of researchers from materials science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, aeronautics and astronautics, mathematics, computer science, and computer architecture.

The researchers will have access to unclassified supercomputers at the three NNSA national labs to run the large-scale simulations. These systems will be at the petascale computing level.

"Petascale computing is the leading edge, the fastest computing that will be possible in the near future," Murthy said. "Right now, the state of the art is terascale computing, a thousand times slower."

Researchers also will use computer resources on the nanoHUB, an Internet-based science gateway that provides access to advanced simulation and software tools. The nanoHub is part of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue. Facilities and hardware provided by Purdue's Office of Information Technology also will be utilized extensively.

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