NAS Division 2008 25 Years of Innovation

National Aeronautics and Space Administration NAS Division 2008 Years of Innovation www.nasa.gov zjjvojvovo LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR OF AMES Greetings, I’m delighted to present this special chronicle celebrating NAS’ 25th anniversary. Created as the Agency’s bold initiative in simulation-based aerospace vehicle design and stewardship, NAS has earned an international reputation as a pioneer in OVERVIEWNAS OVERVIEW AND HISTORY development and application of high-performance computing technologies, providing its diverse cus- a Look at NAS’ 25 Years of Innovation and a Glimpse at the Future tomers with world-class aerospace modeling and In the mid-1970s, a group of Ames aerospace researchers began to study a highly simulation expertise, and state-of-the-art supercom- innovative concept: NASA could transform U.S. aerospace R&D from the costly and cghghmgm puting services. time-consuming wind tunnel-based process to simulation-centric design and engineering by executing emerging computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models on supercomputers at least 1,000 times more powerful than those commercially available at the time. Within these pages, you’ll find an over- to improving the design and safety of the In 1976, Ames Center Director Dr. Hans Mark tasked a group led by Dr. F. Ronald Bailey view of NAS’ 25-year history, pictorial Space Shuttle Main Engine, to adapt- to explore this concept, leading to formation of the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator highlights from the organization’s legacy ing Shuttle technology for a life-saving (NAS) Projects Office in 1979. of accomplishments in supercomput- heart assist device, to leadership in ing and its contributions to the Space single-system image supercomputing At the same time, a user interface group was formed consisting of CFD leaders from Agency’s exciting missions, a snapshot and concurrent visualization that enabled industry, government, and academia to help guide requirements for the NAS concept of the division’s current supercomputing near-real-time hurricane track and inten- gmfgfgmfand provide feedback on evolving computer feasibility studies. At the conclusion of environment, plus a glimpse at what’s in sity forecasts—NAS’ high-end computing these activities in 1982, NASA management changed the NAS approach from a focus on store for NAS in the future. We also honor resources and modeling expertise have purchasing a specially developed supercomputer to an on-going Numerical Aerody- key contributors and partners in NAS’ been, and will continue to be, a critical namic Simulation Program to provide leading-edge computational capabilities based success story—the “superstars” who part of mission success throughout the on an innovative network-centric environment. The NAS Program plan for implementing had the energy and ingenuity to turn NAS Agency. this new approach was signed on February 8, 1983. from concept to reality, anticipate trends, The NAS team’s sustained dedication to and develop new technologies to lead the excellence and mission success over the division to new heights of innovation and Grand Opening years has made the organization a unique mission impact. As the NAS Program got underway, a projects office to a full-fledged division asset to both NASA and the nation’s its first supercomputers were installed at Ames. In January 1987, NAS staff and NAS has achieved some amazing things high-end computing, aerospace, and in Ames’ Central Computing Facility, equipment were relocated to the new over the past several decades, drawing scientific communities. I hope you enjoy starting with a Cray X-MP-12 in 1984. facility, which was dedicated on March 9, from the synergy between computer sci- this overview of our 25-year heritage, as However, a key component of the Program 1987. At the grand opening, excitement ence and modeling and simulation. From well as the exciting vision of what lies plan was to create the NAS facility: a levels were high about what had been applying computational fluid dynamics ahead at NAS. 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 S. Pete Worden for the NAS facility took place on March NASA’s challenging science and engineer- Director, NASA Ames Research Center 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.

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