11 Nov 2016
Whether tracking climate patterns around the globe, improving aircraft safety or designing spacecraft to explore the mysteries of our galaxy, NASA is pushing the boundaries of science, discovery and technology for the benefit of humanity with help from its powerful supercomputers.
Experts from five NASA centers and across the U.S. will present their latest research results and supercomputing achievements at SC16, the international high-performance computing conference, Nov. 14-17 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The NASA exhibit will showcase 40 mission projects that benefit from the agency’s high-performance computing resources, including complex aerodynamic simulations of helicopter rotor blade-tip vortices; high-resolution simulations of shifting ozone patterns; and game-changing modeling and simulation capabilities to design complex entry, descent, and landing systems for future space missions. Attendees will also be shown cutting-edge 3D models and visualizations that provide deeper insights into the sun’s magnetic field cycle of and other solar phenomena that are still difficult to understand.
“NASA supercomputers are critical to helping scientists around the world gain new knowledge and understanding of our complex world and the universe,” said Piyush Mehrotra, chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA's Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “In combination with the agency’s modeling and simulation expertise, we are also addressing quality-of-life issues, such as those caused by extreme weather and solar storms, and aircraft noise close.”
NASA scientists and engineers discussed technology advances at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California and the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The NAS has expanded the power of its Pleiades supercomputer to a total of 246,048 cores and a peak performance of 7.25 petaflops. This increased computing power is needed to support the modeling and simulation requirements of NASA missions in aeronautics, exploration and science.
The NCCS has improved the performance of its Discover supercomputer by approximately 20 percent to bring it to a total of 88,992 cores and a peak performance of 3.4 petaflops. This update has enabled high-resolution, long-time frame studies of the Earth’s climate, including multiple retrospective reanalyses of the climate with updated chemistry and physics models. The NCCS also boosted NASA’s Earth science big data efforts by installing a Data Analytics and Storage System and enhancing its award-winning Advanced Data Analytics Platform.
Demonstrations at the NASA exhibit will represent five NASA locations: Ames Research Center; Goddard Space Flight Center; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia; and Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama; along with university and corporate partners.