News 2014
NASA Honored with Three HPCwire Awards at SC14
Advances in NASA supercomputing technologies were recognized with three HPCwire Awards at the SC14 conference this week in New Orleans, LA. An Editors’ Choice award and two Reader’s Choice Awards were accepted by a team from the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility.
NASA Researchers Receive HPC Innovation Excellence Award
A team from the Environmentally Responsible Aviation project within NASA’s Aeronautics Mission Research Directorate has received an award for their innovative modeling and simulation work, which supports the agency’s efforts to efficiently design and develop viable aircraft noise reduction technologies. The team uses the Pleiades supercomputer to perform simulations of the complex fluid dynamics processes that generate airframe noise.
On Latest TOP500 List, NASA’s Pleiades Supercluster is 7th Among U.S. Supercomputers
With a sustained performance of 3.38 petaflops, the Pleiades supercomputer is now ranked 7th in the United States and 11th worldwide on the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Upgrades completed over the past year improved the system’s performance nearly 120 percent since November 2013.
NASA Researchers Showcase a Year of Science at Supercomputing Conference
Over 30 scientists and engineers from NASA centers across the country are displaying some of the agency’s greatest computational achievements at the 2014 Supercomputing Conference (SC14), this week in New Orleans, LA. Featured presentations include massive global climate models, simulations of galaxy formation, and work being done to improve the design of next-generation aircraft and the the new Space Launch System.
New myNAS App Debuts, Allowing Users to Monitor Jobs Remotely
A new in-house developed mobile app, called myNAS, allows users to remotely monitor jobs running on the NAS facility’s supercomputers using an iPhone or iPad. With the myNAS app, users can check the status of jobs, get notifications about job changes or results, read the latest news from NAS, and even view output files. Note: The myNAS app has been retired. See information about the myNAS web portal.
NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer Upgraded, Gets One Petaflops Boost
Pleiades, NASA’s flagship supercomputer, received a boost in computing power with the installation of 1,080 nodes utilizing new Intel Xeon E5-2680v3 (Haswell) processors. With the upgrade, the system's theoretical peak performance increases to 4.49 petaflops.
NAS hyperwall Visualization System Upgraded with Ivy Bridge Nodes
Systems and visualization engineers at NAS have updated the hyperwall system with new Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge nodes in order to meet the agency’s data analysis and visualization needs. The improved capacity will help to address the challenges associated with the increasingly large amounts of observational and computer model data created by NASA missions and will provide scientists with a powerful analysis tool to gain greater insight from their research.
NASA Supercomputers Support IRIS Discovery in the Sun’s ‘Region of Mystery’
Using observations from NASA’s Interface Region Infrared Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite, and running high-resolution simulations on the agency’s Pleiades supercomputer, scientists have confirmed the existence of magnetic loops in the Sun’s mysterious transition region. Details of the IRIS team’s findings are reported in a special section of Science.
Research Opportunity Announced for Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) has announced a call for proposals to utilize the D-Wave Two quantum computer at NASA’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, located at the NAS facility. The projects selected will have access to the computer from November 2014 through September 2015 in order to research artificial intelligence algorithms and advanced programming techniques for quantum annealing.
NASA Picks Top Earth Data Challenge Ideas, Opens Call for Climate Apps
NASA has selected four ideas from the public for innovative uses of climate projections and Earth-observing satellite data from the Open NASA Earth Exchange (OpenNEX). The agency also has announced a follow-on challenge with awards of $50,000 to build climate applications based on OpenNEX data on the Amazon cloud computing platform. NAS Division scientist Rama Nemani is principal scientist for the NEX project at NASA's Ames Research Center.
NASA Launches Earth Science Challenges with OpenNEX Cloud Data
NASA is launching a two-stage challenge to give the public an opportunity to create innovative ways to use Earth science data from the Open NASA Earth Exchange (OpenNEX) supercomputing and knowledge platform. Awards will be offered for ideas on novel uses of the datasets, and the development of an application or algorithm that promotes climate resilience using the OpenNEX data.
Case Study: NAS Tape-based Solution To Manage and Store High-Volume Data
This study on the mass storage and archiving systems at the NAS facility looks specifically at NAS’s automated method of archiving data from disk to tape, which saves energy and space while still making data easily accessible to users. The Active Archive Alliance is a collaborative industry organization that explores new technologies for enabling reliable, online, and efficient access to archived data.
Why Earth Matters to NASA: A Conversation with Harrison Ford
Actor Harrison Ford visited the NAS facility to film a segment of Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously” documentary on climate change. NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) scientist Rama Nemani and Matthew Hansen, University of Maryland talked to Ford about NASA’s work to study and understand our own planet and make climate information freely available to the public.
Heliophysics Modeling and Simulation Website Debuts
A new website for the Heliophysics Modeling and Simulation (HMS) project provides an overview of research and development work that supports NASA's goal to better understand the Sun’s influence on space weather conditions near Earth. Meet the research team and learn about the latest developments in solar modeling and simulation tools.
New Applied Modeling and Simulation Seminar Video Archive
The NAS Applied Modeling and Simulation (AMS) seminar series addresses recent achievements, innovative tools, and current problems being faced by modeling and simulation communities from NASA, other government agencies, industry, and academia. Now you can view videos, abstracts and speaker biographies from recent seminars; find announcements of upcoming talks; and search our new archive of past seminar topics.
NASA’s IRIS Spots Its Largest Solar Flare
NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission, which utilizes the Pleiades supercomputer to carry out numerical simulations, witnessed an M–class solar flare in late January, the largest flare the spacecraft viewed since its launch June 2013.
The Holy Grail of Aircraft Noise Reduction
In the quest for “the holy grail of aircraft noise reduction,” NASA’s Mehdi Khorrami uses the Pleiades supercomputer to perform simulations of the complex interactions between airflow and airframe components that generate noise on commercial aircraft
Read more about aircraft noise simulations run on the Pleaides supercomputer.
