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Metal hydrides are an interesting class of chemical compounds that can reversibly bind a large amount of hydrogen and are, therefore, of interest for energy applications. Understanding the factors affecting the kinetics of hydride formation and decomposition is especially important. Features of the material, experimental setup and conditions affect the mathematical description of the processes, which can undergo significant changes during the processing of experimental data. The article proposes a general approach to numerical modeling of the formation and decomposition of metal hydrides and solving inverse problems of estimating material parameters from measurement data. The models are divided into two classes: diffusive ones, that take into account the gradient of hydrogen concentration in the metal lattice, and models with fast diffusion. The former are more complex and take the form of non-classical boundary value problems of parabolic type. A rather general approach to the grid solution of such problems is described. The second ones are solved relatively simply, but can change greatly when model assumptions change. Our experience in processing experimental data shows that a flexible software tool is needed; a tool that allows, on the one hand, building models from standard blocks, freely changing them if necessary, and, on the other hand, avoiding the implementation of routine algorithms. It also should be adapted for high-performance systems of different paradigms. These conditions are satisfied by the HIMICOS library presented in the paper, which has been tested on a large number of experimental data. It allows simulating the kinetics of formation and decomposition of metal hydrides, as well as related tasks, at three levels of abstraction. At the low level, the user defines the interface procedures, such as calculating the time layer based on the previous layer or the entire history, calculating the observed value and the independent variable from the task variables, comparing the curve with the reference. Special algorithms can be used for solving quite general parabolic-type boundary value problems with free boundaries and with various quasilinear (i.e., linear with respect to the derivative only) boundary conditions, as well as calculating the distance between the curves in different metric spaces and with different normalization. This is the middle level of abstraction. At the high level, it is enough to choose a ready tested model for a particular material and modify it in relation to the experimental conditions.

Modern big science projects are becoming highly data intensive to the point where offline processing of stored data is infeasible. High data throughput computing, or Data Stream Computing, for future projects is required to deal with terabytes of data per second which cannot be stored in long-term storage elements. Conventional data-centres based on typical server-grade hardware are expensive and are biased towards processing power. The overall I/O bandwidth can be increased with massive parallelism, usually at the expense of excessive processing power and high energy consumption. An ARM System on Chip (SoC) based processing unit may address the issue of system I/O and CPU balance, affordability and energy efficiency since ARM SoCs are mass produced and designed to be energy efficient for use in mobile devices. Such a processing unit is currently in development, with a design goal of 20 Gb/s I/O throughput and significant processing power. The I/O capabilities of consumer ARM System on Chips are discussed along with to-date performance and I/O throughput tests.

Big science projects are producing data at ever increases rates. Typical techniques involve storing the data to disk, after minor filtering, and then processing it in large computer farms. Data production has reached a point where on-line processing is required in order to filter the data down to manageable sizes. A potential solution involves using low-cost, low-power ARM processors in large arrays to provide massive parallelisation for data stream computing (DSC). The main advantage in using System on Chips (SoCs) is inherent in its design philosophy. SoCs are primarily used in mobile devices and hence consume less power while maintaining relatively good performance. A benchmarking characterisation of three different models of ARM processors will be presented.

Computational intensity is traditionally the focus of large-scale computing system designs, generally leaving such designs ill-equipped to efficiently handle throughput-oriented workloads. In addition, cost and energy consumption considerations for large-scale computing systems in general remain a source of concern. A potential solution involves using low-cost, low-power ARM processors in large arrays in a manner which provides massive parallelisation and high rates of data throughput (relative to existing large-scale computing designs). Giving greater priority to both throughput-rate and cost considerations increases the relevance of primary memory performance and design optimisations to overall system performance. Using several primary memory performance benchmarks to evaluate various aspects of RAM and cache performance, we provide characterisations of the performances of four different models of ARM-based system-on-chip, namely the Cortex-A9, Cortex- A7, Cortex-A15 r3p2 and Cortex-A15 r3p3. We then discuss the relevance of these results to high volume computing and the potential for ARM processors.