High Resolution Aerospace Applications using the NASA Columbia Supercomputer

This paper focuses on the parallel performance of two high-performance aerodynamic simulation packages on the newly installed NASA Columbia supercomputer. These packages include both a high-fidelity, unstructured, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solver, and a fully-automated inviscid flow package for cut-cell Cartesian grids. The complementary combination of these two simulation codes enables high-fidelity characterization of aerospace vehicle design performance over the entire flight envelope through extensive parametric analysis and detailed simulation of critical regions of the flight envelope. Both packages. are industrial-level codes designed for complex geometry and incorpor.ats. CuStomized multigrid solution algorithms. The performance of these codes on Columbia is examined using both MPI and OpenMP and using both the NUMAlink and InfiniBand interconnect fabrics. Numerical results demonstrate good scalability on up to 2016 CPUs using the NUMAIink4 interconnect, with measured computational rates in the vicinity of 3 TFLOP/s, while InfiniBand showed some performance degradation at high CPU counts, particularly with multigrid. Nonetheless, the results are encouraging enough to indicate that larger test cases using combined MPI/OpenMP communication should scale well on even more processors

Role of High-End Computing in Meeting NASA's Science and Engineering Challenges

Two years ago, NASA was on the verge of dramatically increasing its HEC capability and capacity. With the 10,240-processor supercomputer, Columbia, now in production for 18 months, HEC has an even greater impact within the Agency and extending to partner institutions. Advanced science and engineering simulations in space exploration, shuttle operations, Earth sciences, and fundamental aeronautics research are occurring on Columbia, demonstrating its ability to accelerate NASA s exploration vision. This talk describes how the integrated production environment fostered at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at Ames Research Center is accelerating scientific discovery, achieving parametric analyses of multiple scenarios, and enhancing safety for NASA missions. We focus on Columbia s impact on two key engineering and science disciplines: Aerospace, and Climate. We also discuss future mission challenges and plans for NASA s next-generation HEC environment

The NASA SBIR product catalog

The purpose of this catalog is to assist small business firms in making the community aware of products emerging from their efforts in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. It contains descriptions of some products that have advanced into Phase 3 and others that are identified as prospective products. Both lists of products in this catalog are based on information supplied by NASA SBIR contractors in responding to an invitation to be represented in this document. Generally, all products suggested by the small firms were included in order to meet the goals of information exchange for SBIR results. Of the 444 SBIR contractors NASA queried, 137 provided information on 219 products. The catalog presents the product information in the technology areas listed in the table of contents. Within each area, the products are listed in alphabetical order by product name and are given identifying numbers. Also included is an alphabetical listing of the companies that have products described. This listing cross-references the product list and provides information on the business activity of each firm. In addition, there are three indexes: one a list of firms by states, one that lists the products according to NASA Centers that managed the SBIR projects, and one that lists the products by the relevant Technical Topics utilized in NASA's annual program solicitation under which each SBIR project was selected

CFD Assessment of Forward Booster Separation Motor Ignition Overpressure on ET XT 718 Ice/Frost Ramp

Computational fluid dynamics assessment of the forward booster separation motor ignition over-pressure was performed on the space shuttle external tank X(sub T) 718 ice/frost ramp using the flow solver OVERFLOW. The main objective of this study was the investigation of the over-pressure during solid rocket booster separation and its affect on the local pressure and air-load environments. Delta pressure and plume impingement were investigated as a possible contributing factor to the cause of the debris loss on shuttle missions STS-125 and STS-127. A simplified computational model of the Space Shuttle Launch Vehicle was developed consisting of just the external tank and the solid rocket boosters with separation motor nozzles and plumes. The simplified model was validated by comparison to full fidelity computational model of the Space Shuttle without the separation motors. Quasi steady-state plume solutions were used to calibrate the thrust of the separation motors. Time-accurate simulations of the firing of the booster-separation motors were performed. Parametric studies of the time-step size and the number of sub-iterations were used to find the best converged solution. The computed solutions were compared to previous OVERFLOW steady-state runs of the separation motors with reaction control system jets and to ground test data. The results indicated that delta pressure from the overpressure was small and within design limits, and thus was unlikely to have contributed to the foam losses

Earth and environmental science in the 1980's: Part 1: Environmental data systems, supercomputer facilities and networks

Overview descriptions of on-line environmental data systems, supercomputer facilities, and networks are presented. Each description addresses the concepts of content, capability, and user access relevant to the point of view of potential utilization by the Earth and environmental science community. The information on similar systems or facilities is presented in parallel fashion to encourage and facilitate intercomparison. In addition, summary sheets are given for each description, and a summary table precedes each section

Contextual classification on the massively parallel processor

Classifiers are often used to produce land cover maps from multispectral Earth observation imagery. Conventionally, these classifiers have been designed to exploit the spectral information contained in the imagery. Very few classifiers exploit the spatial information content of the imagery, and the few that do rarely exploit spatial information content in conjunction with spectral and/or temporal information. A contextual classifier that exploits spatial and spectral information in combination through a general statistical approach was studied. Early test results obtained from an implementation of the classifier on a VAX-11/780 minicomputer were encouraging, but they are of limited meaning because they were produced from small data sets. An implementation of the contextual classifier is presented on the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) at Goddard that for the first time makes feasible the testing of the classifier on large data sets

NASA SBIR abstracts of 1990 phase 1 projects

The research objectives of the 280 projects placed under contract in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 1990 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 program are described. The basic document consists of edited, non-proprietary abstracts of the winning proposals submitted by small businesses in response to NASA's 1990 SBIR Phase 1 Program Solicitation. The abstracts are presented under the 15 technical topics within which Phase 1 proposals were solicited. Each project was assigned a sequential identifying number from 001 to 280, in order of its appearance in the body of the report. The document also includes Appendixes to provide additional information about the SBIR program and permit cross-reference in the 1990 Phase 1 projects by company name, location by state, principal investigator, NASA field center responsible for management of each project, and NASA contract number

Electra: A Modular-Based Expansion of NASA's Supercomputing Capability

NASA has increasingly relied on high-performance computing (HPC) re- sources for computational modeling, simulation, and data analysis to meet the science and engineering goals of its missions in space exploration, aeronautics, and Earth and space science. The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, Calif., hosts NASAs premier supercomputing resources, integral to achieving and enhancing the success of the agencys missions. NAS provides a balanced environment, funded under the High-End Computing Capability (HECC) project, comprised of world-class supercomputers, including its flagship distributed-memory cluster, Pleiades; high-speed networking; and massive data storage facilities, along with multi-disciplinary support teams for user support, code porting and optimization, and large-scale data analysis and scientific visualization. However, as scientists have increased the fidelity of their simulations and engineers are conducting larger parameter-space studies, the requirements for supercomputing resources have been growing by leaps and bounds. With the facility housing the HECC systems reaching its power and cooling capacity, NAS undertook a prototype project to investigate an alternative approach for housing supercomputers. Modular supercomputing, or container-based computing, is an innovative concept for expanding NASAs HPC capabilities. With modular supercomputing, additional containerssimilar to portable storage podscan be connected together as needed to accommodate the agencys ever-increasing demand for computing resources. In addition, taking advantage of the local weather permits the use of cooling technologies that would additionally save energy and reduce annual water usage. The first stage of NASAs Modular Supercomputing Facility (MSF) prototype, which resulted in a 1,000 square-foot module on a concrete pad with room for 16 compute racks, was completed in Fall 2016 and an SGI (now HPE) computer system, named Electra, was deployed there in early 2017. Cooling is performed via an evaporative system built into the module, and preliminary experience shows a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) measurement of 1.03. Electra achieved over a petaflop on the LINPACK benchmark, sufficient to rank number 96 on the November 2016 TOP500 list [14]. The system consists of 1,152 InfiniBand-connected Intel Xeon Broadwell-based nodes. Its users access their files on a facility-wide file system shared by all HECC compute assets via Mellanox MetroX InfiniBand extenders, which connect the Electra fabric to Lustre routers in the primary facility over fiber-optic links about 900 feet long. The MSF prototype has exceeded expectations and is serving as a blueprint for future expansions. In the remainder of this chapter, we detail how modular data center technology can be used to expand an existing compute resource. We begin by describing NASAs requirements for supercomputing and how resources were provided prior to the integration of the Electra module-based system