The $300,000.00 USD Divide and Conquer Challenge seeks solutions to improve the execution speed of models that simulate flow hydraulics and sediment transport in rivers and reservoirs. The challenge is hosted by Freelancer in partnership with the Bureau of Reclamation and NASA Tournament Lab. To participate in Phase 1 of the challenge, solvers will need to create or adapt an existing parallelized or parallelizable linear equation sparse matrix solver (LESMS) and demonstrate its performance.
Reclamation’s Sedimentation and River Hydraulics Group studies how rivers and reservoirs have or will respond to changes in river flow, sediment supply, or channel modification. Currently, engineers and scientists use Reclamation’s own incomplete lower-upper conjugate gradient solver (ILU-CGS) to solve two- and three-dimensional models on PCs. Reclamation’s solver is very stable but because it is hard for it to be parallelized efficiently, it only runs on a single-core and therefore it is slow for large problems. The Divide and Conquer Challenge seeks to replace Reclamation’s existing Sedimentation and River Hydraulics 2D (SRH-2D) model with a parallelized version that incorporates newly developed LESMS from the Challenge.
Phase 1 seeks new or adapted existing parallelized or parallelizable LESMS and a demonstration of its performance. Up to 4 entries will be awarded a portion of the $150,000 prize purse. Phase 1 competitors who meet or exceed benchmark stability, convergence, and parallel speedup values qualify to compete in Phase 2.
Phase 2 solvers will need to parallelize the Reclamation 2D hydraulic model (SRH-2D), incorporate their parallel LESMS from Phase 1 into it, and demonstrate the parallel speedup. The top 2 solutions will share in the $150,000 Phase 2 prize purse.
The Bureau of Reclamation is the largest wholesaler of water in the United States, bringing water to more than 31 million people in the western regions. Their 53 hydroelectric power plants provide more than 40 billion kilowatt hours annually, making them the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the US. Reclamation’s numerous programs, initiatives and activities help the Western States, Native American Tribes and others meet new water needs.
Reclamation and Freelancer started their relationship with Freelancer’s participation in the NASA Open Innovation Services 2 (NOIS2) joint tender.
Awards:- The challenge will be run in two phases with a total prize purse of $300,000.00 USD.
Deadline:- 27-03-2022
