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Overview and History Nas Overview zjjvojvovo OVERVIEWNAS OVERVIEW AND HISTORY a Look at NAS’ 25 Years of Innovation and a Glimpse at the Future In the mid-1970s, a group of Ames aerospace researchers began to study a highly innovative concept: NASA could transform U.S. aerospace R&D from the costly and cghghmgm time-consuming wind tunnel-based process to simulation-centric design and engineer- ing by executing emerging computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models on supercom- puters at least 1,000 times more powerful than those commercially available at the time. In 1976, Ames Center Director Dr. Hans Mark tasked a group led by Dr. F. Ronald Bailey to explore this concept, leading to formation of the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator (NAS) Projects Office in 1979. At the same time, a user interface group was formed consisting of CFD leaders from industry, government, and academia to help guide requirements for the NAS concept gmfgfgmfand provide feedback on evolving computer feasibility studies. At the conclusion of these activities in 1982, NASA management changed the NAS approach from a focus on purchasing a specially developed supercomputer to an on-going Numerical Aerody- namic Simulation Program to provide leading-edge computational capabilities based on an innovative network-centric environment. The NAS Program plan for implementing this new approach was signed on February 8, 1983. Grand Opening As the NAS Program got underway, a projects office to a full-fledged division its first supercomputers were installed at Ames. In January 1987, NAS staff and in Ames’ Central Computing Facility, equipment were relocated to the new starting with a Cray X-MP-12 in 1984. facility, which was dedicated on March 9, However, a key component of the Program 1987. At the grand opening, excitement plan was to create the NAS facility: a levels were high about what had been state-of-the-art supercomputing center accomplished so far, and about what was as well as a multi-disciplinary innova- yet to come. tion environment, bringing together CFD experts, computer scientists, visualization Pioneering Achievements specialists, and network and storage en- From its earliest years, NAS has achieved gineers under one roof. Groundbreaking many firsts in computing and in enabling for the NAS facility took place on March NASA’s challenging science and engineer- 14, 1985. In 1986, NAS transitioned from ing missions, including deployment of NAS Overview 1 NAS OVERVIEW (CONTINUED) the first Cray-2 in 1985, which attained development and applications. Redesign Rediscovering the Mission at NAS was assured with the formation increasingly challenging modeling and unprecedented performance on real of the Shuttle main engine, failure of Starting in 2001, NASA conducted of the High End Computing Columbia simulation requirements. Emerging in- CFD codes. NAS was also the first facility the Challenger O-ring, wing stall and a series of major engineering studies, project as the first asset in the Strategic novative architectures and systems will be to put the UNIX operating system on aerodynamic loads for fighter airplanes, including the X-37 vehicle atmospheric Capabilities Assets Program (SCAP). strategically leveraged to provide the most supercomputers, and the first to imple- thrust loss in vertical take-off jets—all reentry and the Shuttle’s hydrogen NAS remains widely recognized as the effective supercomputing platforms and ment TCP/IP networking in a supercom- demonstrated the potential of CFD sup- fuel line flowliner cracking, each of premier supercomputing facility for the environments. Advanced algorithms and puting environment, linking to users ported by faster supercomputing to help which required most of NAS’ computa- Agency, and vital to each of NASA’s mis- applications will be developed in lockstep across the country. In 1984, NAS became lives and millions of dollars. Many of tional resources for three to six months, sion directorates. In 2007, the Aeronau- to exploit these petascale systems. the first organization to connect super- the award-winning codes that supported significantly delaying other important tics Research and Exploration Systems Partnerships with other NASA centers, computers and workstations together to these analyses were also developed at simulations. Following the Columbia Mission Directorates procured additional government laboratories, the computer distribute computation and visualization NAS, including INS3D, OVERFLOW, and tragedy in February 2003, the Agency resources and placed them at NAS to industry, and academia are being aggres- (what is now known as the client-server Cart3D. These codes have continued to again turned to NAS CFD experts for foam augment their SCAP allocations. NAS sively developed to continue Ames and model). In another innovation, NAS de- evolve through the years, and remain debris transport analysis, further straining facilities and staff are playing key roles the NAS facility’s proud reputation of be- veloped the first UNIX-based hierarchical workhorses for NASA missions today. NAS computational resources in an effort in Shuttle operations, designing the Ares ing the “go-to” place for supercomputing mass storage system, NAStore. NAS was to determine the physical cause of the and Orion space exploration vehicles, and advanced simulations. Discussions the first customer for Silicon Graphics New Directions accident. The Earth Science Enterprise advancing Earth and space science un- are underway regarding bleeding-edge Inc. (SGI), beginning an enduring partner- With a wealth of information technol- stepped in once more to support the derstanding, and conducting aeronautics concepts such as 10-petaflop systems ship that remains important today, and ogy expertise and a visionary spirit, purchase of Kalpana, NAS’ first SGI Altix research in all flight regimes. and 1-exabyte data archives at NAS, that led to the successful NASA-SGI-Intel NAS helped pioneer new technologies, system, which enabled the even larger connected to the science and engineering collaboration on the Columbia supercom- including computational nanotechnol- computational modeling effort required to Future community via 1 terabit-per-second links, puter in 2004. ogy and grid computing, starting in the improve the Shuttle design for a success- While reflecting on NAS’ 25-year legacy enabling near-real-time aerospace design mid-1990s. NAS even set up one of the ful Return to Flight. is inspiring, current NAS and Agency and deeper understanding of our planet NAS has also been a leader in visual- earliest websites in the world in 1993. leadership is carrying on the tradition of and the universe. ization, benchmarking standards, and In the late 1990s, NASA’s Shuttle flights By June 2004, the importance of the visionaries of a quarter century ago. job management. The graphics tools, began to seem routine, and aeronautics supercomputing-enabled high-fidelity The newly-installed Hyperwall-2 graphics At NAS, we honor our past most sincerely PLOT3D and FAST, both had vast user research and modeling lost momentum modeling and simulation for aerospace and data analysis system—currently by continually pursuing more impressive bases and won major software awards in the Agency, leading to diminished and other missions was clear. Purchase the world’s highest resolution display achievements in the future. And as these from NASA. The NAS Parallel Bench- investment in supercomputing capa- of the Columbia supercomputer was ap- at a quarter-billion pixels—will allow triumphs attract a new generation of inno- marks (NPB), which became the industry bilities and CFD research. Nevertheless, proved by NASA and Congress in record supercomputer users to view and explore vators and leaders to NAS, soon enough standard for objective evaluation of NAS managed to sustain its interna- time, and the system returned supercom- their computational results in unprec- their aspirations and achievements will parallel computing architectures, are tional leadership in single-system image puting leadership to the U.S. after two edented detail and speed. Visualization exceed our own. still widely used today. And since its supercomputing with funding from an and a half years with the Japanese Earth will become more tightly integrated into first release in 1994, the Portable Batch information technology R&D project and Simulator having the highest computa- the traditional environment of computing, System (PBS) has been commercialized NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise. In 1995, tional performance. More importantly, storage, and networks to provide a more and adopted broadly in the supercomput- NAS changed its name to the Numerical NASA was able to pursue its new Space powerful tool to scientists and engineers. ing community. Aerospace Simulation Division, and in Exploration mission and simultaneously The NAS facility is being significantly 2001, NAS became the NASA Advanced conduct leadership research in Earth upgraded and expanded in preparation for Throughout its history, NAS has also Supercomputing Division—the name it science, astrophysics, and aerospace installation of new generations of leader- been a pioneer and committed partner retains today. modeling. In October 2005, NASA’s long- ship-class supercomputers over the com- in both high-fidelity modeling tool term commitment to supercomputing ing months and years to address NASA’s 2 NAS Overview NAS Overview 3 TIMELINE (1983–1988) A visionary team of managers, engineers, 25 Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) IRIS 1000 graphics and CFD researchers develops the NAS NAS Program
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