NASA has purchased 16 POWER CHALLENGE(tm) L supercomputers all of which incorporate the world's fastest supercomputing microprocessor, the MIPS(r) RISC R8000(tm). The POWER CHALLENGEarray combines the power of several POWER CHALLENGE systems connected by high-speed network connections, such as HiPPI and FDDI. The POWER CHALLENGEarray utilizes a modular approach to create a highly scalable supercomputing system ideal for solving Grand Challenge class problems in areas such as computational fluid dynamics, operations research optimization techniques and seismic data processing.
"NASA has experienced a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with Silicon Graphics and has long utilized the company's 3D visualization capabilities for development and applied research in scientific visualization," said Marisa Chancellor, acting division chief at NAS. "We envision the POWER CHALLENGEarray playing a role in assisting NAS as it continues to conduct research and testing in Computational Aerospace Projects."The goal of the CAS project in the NASA HPCC Program is to accelerate the development and availability of high-performance computing technology that will be of use to the U.S. Aerospace community. Designers of the testbed will develop, integrate and test system software that makes a cluster of heterogeneous workstations appear as a single integrated environment and to develop cost-effective parallel CAS applications.
"NAS has continually pushed the envelope with its research and development of applications in aeronautical technology," said Ron Bernal, vice president and general manager of Silicon Graphics' Supercomputing Systems Division. "By utilizing this advanced technology, NAS is shining a beacon into the future of aerospace design. We believe that many of the designs of future-generation aircraft will have their roots in the CAS project."Several solutions from Silicon Graphics' Distributed Powercomputing Program will be utilized in the project. The initial configuration will use LSF 2.0 from Platform Computing as a load sharing management tool. Both PVM and MPI will also be used as message passing libraries over FDDI, HiPPI, ATM and Ethernet network connections.
The Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation program was started in 1984 to maintain the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical technology. NAS objectives are to act as a pathfinder in advanced, large scale computational capability through systematic incorporation of state-of-the-art improvements in computer hardware and software technologies; to provide a national computational capability, available to NASA, DOD, industry, other governmental agencies and universities, as a necessary element in ensuring continuing leadership in computational fluid dynamics and related computational aerospace disciplines; and to provide a strong research tool for the Office of Aeronautics within NASA itself.
Contact: Virginia Henderson (415) 390-1306
Silicon Graphics, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of high-performance visual computing systems. The company delivers interactive three-dimensional graphics, digital media and multiprocessing supercomputing technologies to technical, scientific and creative professionals. Its subsidiary, MIPS Technologies, Inc., designs and licenses the industry's leading RISC processor technology for the computer systems and embedded control markets. Silicon Graphics has offices worldwide and headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Silicon Graphics is a registered trademark and POWER CHALLENGE and POWER CHALLENGEarray are trademarks, of Silicon Graphics, Inc. MIPS is a registered trademark and R8000 is a trademark of MIPS Technologies Inc. All other products, brand names or companies are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
