Supercomputing 1997 highlights NASA technology

By Pat Elson

For the first time, technology from five NASA centers was demonstrated in a combined booth during Supercomputing '97, Nov. 15 - 21 in San Jose, Calif. Coordinated by the High Performance Computing and Communications Program Office, the NASA booth was one of the largest research exhibits, with 20 workstations and four videos showcasing projects from NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), Langley Research Center (LaRC), Lewis Research Center (LeRC), Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

In keeping with the conference theme of high-performance networking and computing, NASA demonstrated cost-effective clustered supercomputing solutions. The ARC Whitney project and the LeRC P6 project both used off-the-shelf hardware and extensible system software while highlighting unique software solutions for parallel computing.

The GSFC video entitled Images of Earth and Space featured a simulated voyage through the solar system and global climate modeling. Additional videos on the NASA Research and Educational Network, LeRC's Numerical Propulsion System Simulation and LaRC's Framework for Interdisciplinary Design Optimization were presented.