notoriousformula
12-30-2004, 12:59 AM
NASA supercomputer tackles shuttle problems
According to a popular ranking, the supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center near San Francisco is second in speed only to a computer that has not even been completed.
"It's really 20 supercomputers," Brooks said.
Each of 20 Silicon Graphics Altix "fat nodes" contains 512 Intel Itanium processors running at 1.5 gigahertz. Your home computer may have one processor or, if it's really hot, two.
"Our system, with 10,240 processors, is one of the very largest systems that's deployed in the world," Brooks said. "It's up there at the very top of whatever that pyramid is."
Problem solver
The speed of the computer, built in just four months and unveiled in October, would allow experts to respond to a shuttle emergency in real time for the first time, he said. By taking over half the supercomputer's capacity, engineers might simulate the effects of shuttle damage in 24 hours.
The Columbia computer cost about $50 million to build and about $50 million a year to run, Brooks said.
Link (http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/spacestoryN1227COMPUTER.htm)
According to a popular ranking, the supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center near San Francisco is second in speed only to a computer that has not even been completed.
"It's really 20 supercomputers," Brooks said.
Each of 20 Silicon Graphics Altix "fat nodes" contains 512 Intel Itanium processors running at 1.5 gigahertz. Your home computer may have one processor or, if it's really hot, two.
"Our system, with 10,240 processors, is one of the very largest systems that's deployed in the world," Brooks said. "It's up there at the very top of whatever that pyramid is."
Problem solver
The speed of the computer, built in just four months and unveiled in October, would allow experts to respond to a shuttle emergency in real time for the first time, he said. By taking over half the supercomputer's capacity, engineers might simulate the effects of shuttle damage in 24 hours.
The Columbia computer cost about $50 million to build and about $50 million a year to run, Brooks said.
Link (http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/spacestoryN1227COMPUTER.htm)