Disruptive technologies
The notion of “disruptive technology” implies the meaning of “breaking traditions”.
Challenges: in the context of application domains using exascale computing it is a challenge by itself to classify disruptiveness, since:
- exascale technologies are still under discussion
- “applications” refer to actual scenarios. Thus disruptive technologies must show a tangible potential to be successful.
Therefore, the selection of discussion topics is not exhaustive. It is based on fields where some development has already been achieved though not yet mature. They bare risks and a high potential at the same time, for a very large class of applications.
Discussion topics have an inherently interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary feature. They often include a variety of length- and time-scales and a diversity of different methods, e.g. stochastics vs deterministics, lattice vs mesh-less methods, optimization, dynamics vs sampling methods including multiscale methodologies.
Very complex networks exist in nature and technological applications, which form a type of self-organized, synthesized or genetically determined structure. The function of such systems is difficult to recast in a straightforward and deterministic way.
In the end, various types of problems relates to the complexity of the problems itself.
Path: break-throughs can be reached if methodological and algorithmic advances are further progressed.
Multiscale techniques can be considered versatile method to characterise complex systems over various time- and length-scales. However, multiscale often implies multi-numerics, i.e. coupling different methods which have their own stability constraints and level of accuracy and a concurrent coupling of methods might not guarantee a possible error control.
Socio-economic or environmental problems, like climate change, neurological diseases, efficient energy-production and -usage or market crashes, can be understood using complex networks or functions within networks. This would require to address code couplers, training, Big Data, mini applications, ultra scalable solvers as well as uncertainty quantification & Optimization methods and tools.