High Performance Computing in Seismic Processing & Oil Exploration

Chair:

Majid F. Al-Ghaslan, Interim CIO, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia

Seismologists were among the first scientists to exploit the capabilities of advanced computing technology. Thirty years ago oil companies purchased the first "supercomputers" to process and analyze seismic reflection data in the search for petroleum. Shortly afterward, HPC systems were also used for seismological modeling and the field of seismology benefited tremendously and has been dramatically affected from the emergence of high-performance computing. These activities engaged seismologists at the leading edge of technology, spurred the development of new computer technology and enhanced the discovery of energy resources.

The goal of the session is to demonstrate to the audience the critical importance of high-performance computers to seismology because they are used at all stages of data acquisition, communication, modeling, and analysis.

Two speakers will talk about seismic applications, where the practical importance ranges from the mitigation of seismic hazards to locating undiscovered petroleum reserves. They also will present future research problems in which high-performance computing resources are required to advance modeling techniques for a better understanding of seismic wave generation and propagation.

Two other speakers will concentrate on the visualization of three-dimensional seismic images. For example, seismologists engaged in petroleum exploration and development have to develop improved methodologies using high-resolution graphics for generating accurate three-dimensional images of subsurface structures.

In addition we have a presentation showing us the computational challenges in seismology. Current seismic computations require gigaflop computing. Enhancing the codes to perform complex model simulations will push the field into the realm of teraflop/petaflop computing. Significant work remains in developing algorithms for these more complex models that can scale to petaflop computers. For these reasons the future strength of seismology will be closely coupled to the degree that the seismic community incorporates and utilizes advances in high-performance computing.

This session will give an exciting perspective on the future of supercomputing in seismology.

Who should attend this session?

• Decision makers and IT managers to better understand the seismological field, that has adapted HPC systems since more than 30 years with tremendous success.
• Developers and system engineers to get more insight into applications running on Teraflops supercomputers and to learn more about the graphical challenges seismologists have to solve to visualize the tremendous amount of data resulting from wave propagation of subsurface structures.