Enabling Data Reduction for Flash-X Simulations

High-fidelity physics simulation codes, such as Flash-X, generate large amounts of simulation data. Much of the data written to files is sparse and can be compressed without significantly impacting the accuracy of the simulation or the quality of the visualizations. Reduced file sizes can significantly save storage space and bandwidth, and offer improved performance of visualization tools. Reduction in file size also allows the simulation to output more data for higher resolution/fidelity analysis. We introduced SZ3 and ZFP compression technologies into Flash-X as an effective data reduction strategy. We conducted experiments on the Frontier exascale supercomputer, evaluating both lossless and lossy compression techniques and quantifying their effects. We examined the impact of accuracy variations and chunk size variations for different Flash-X problems. Our study provides valuable insights and guidelines for simulation developers, helping them understand the best ways to adopt compression tailored to their specific problems.