The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division is located at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, California. It has been the major supercomputing and modeling and simulation resource for NASA missions in aerodynamics, space exploration, studies in weather patterns and ocean currents, and space shuttle and aircraft design and development for almost forty years.
The facility currently houses the petascale Pleiades, Aitken, and Electra supercomputers, as well as the terascale Endeavour supercomputer. The systems are based on SGI and HPE architecture with Intel processors. The main building also houses disk and archival tape storage systems with a capacity of over an exabyte of data, the hyperwall visualization system, and one of the largest InfiniBand network fabrics in the world. The NAS Division is part of NASA's Exploration Technology Directorate and operates NASA's High-End Computing Capability (HECC) Project.
History
Founding In the mid-1970s, a group of aerospace engineers at Ames Research Center began to look into transferring aerospace research and development from costly and time-consuming wind tunnel testing to simulation-based design and engineering using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models on supercomputers more powerful than those commercially available at the time. This endeavor was later named the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator (NAS) Project and the first computer was installed at the Central Computing Facility at Ames Research Center in 1984.
Groundbreaking on a state-of-the-art supercomputing facility took place on March 14, 1985 in order to construct a building where CFD experts, computer scientists, visualization specialists, and network and storage engineers could be under one roof in a collaborative environment. In 1986, NAS transitioned into a full-fledged NASA division and in 1987, NAS staff and equipment, including a second supercomputer, a Cray-2 named Navier, were relocated to the new facility, which was dedicated on March 9, 1987.
In 1995, NAS changed its name to the Numerical Aerospace Simulation Division, and in 2001 to the name it has today.
Industry leading innovations NAS has been one of the leading innovators in the supercomputing world, developing many tools and processes that became widely used in commercial supercomputing. Some of these firsts include: Installed Cray's first UNIX-based supercomputer Implemented a client/server model linking the supercomputers and workstations together to distribute computation and visualization Developed and implemented a high-speed wide area network (WAN) connecting supercomputing resources to remote users (AEROnet) Co-developed NASA's first method for dynamic distribution of production loads across supercomputing resources in geographically distant locations (NASA Metacenter) Implemented TCP/IP networking in a supercomputing environment Developed a batch-queuing system for supercomputers (NQS) Developed a UNIX-based hierarchical mass storage system (NAStore) Co-developed (with SGI) the first IRIX single system image 256-, 512-, and 1,024-processor supercomputers Co-developed (with SGI) the first Linux-based single-system image 512- and 1,024-processor supercomputers A 2,048-processor shared memory environment
Software development NAS develops and adapts software in order to "complement and enhance the work performed on its supercomputers, including software for systems support, monitoring systems, security, and scientific visualization," and often provides this software to its users through the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA).
A few of the important software developments from NAS include: NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) were developed to evaluate highly parallel supercomputers and mimic the characteristics of large-scale CFD applications. Portable Batch System (PBS) was the first batch queuing software for parallel and distributed systems. It was released commercially in 1998 and is still widely used in the industry. PLOT3D was created in 1982 and is a computer graphics program still used today to visualize the grids and solutions of structured CFD datasets. The PLOT3D team was awarded the fourth largest prize ever given by the NASA Space Act Program for the development of their software, which revolutionized scientific visualization and analysis of 3D CFD solutions. FAST (Flow Analysis Software Toolkit) is a software environment based on PLOT3D and used to analyze data from numerical simulations which, though tailored to CFD visualization, can be used to visualize almost any scalar and vector data. It was awarded the NASA Software of the Year Award in 1995. INS2D and INS3D are codes developed by NAS engineers to solve incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in two- and three-dimensional generalized coordinates, respectively, for steady-state and time varying flow. In 1994, INS3D won the NASA Software of the Year Award. Cart3D is a high-fidelity analysis package for aerodynamic design which allows users to perform automated CFD simulations on complex forms. It is still used at NASA and other government agencies to test conceptual and preliminary air- and spacecraft designs. The Cart3D team won the NASA Software of the Year award in 2002. OVERFLOW (Overset grid flow solver) is a software package developed to simulate fluid flow around solid bodies using Reynolds-averaged, Navier-Stokes CFD equations. It was the first general-purpose NASA CFD code for overset (Chimera) grid systems and was released outside of NASA in 1992. Chimera Grid Tools (CGT) is a software package containing a variety of tools for the Chimera overset grid approach for solving CFD problems of surface and volume grid generation; as well as grid manipulation, smoothing, and projection. HiMAP A three level (Intra/Inter discipline, multicase) parallel HIgh fidelity Multidisciplinary (Fluids, Structures, Controls) Analysis Process,
Supercomputing history Since its construction in 1987, the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility has housed and operated some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Many of these computers include testbed systems built to test new architecture, hardware, or networking set-ups that might be utilized on a larger scale. Peak performance is shown in Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS). Computer Name Architecture Peak Performance Number of CPUs Installation Date Cray XMP-12 210.53 megaflops 1 1984 Navier Cray 2 1.95 gigaflops 4 1985 Chuck Convex 3820 1.9 gigaflops 8 1987 Pierre Thinking Machines CM2 14.34 gigaflops 16,000 1987 43 gigaflops 48,000 1991 Stokes Cray 2 1.95 gigaflops 4 1988 Piper CDC/ETA-10Q 840 megaflops 4 1988 Reynolds Cray Y-MP 2.54 gigaflops 8 1988 2.67 gigaflops 88 1988 Lagrange Intel iPSC/860 7.88 gigaflops 128 1990 Gamma Intel iPSC/860 7.68 gigaflops 128 1990 von Karman Convex 3240 200 megaflops 4 1991 Boltzmann Thinking Machines CM5 16.38 gigaflops 128 1993 Sigma Intel Paragon 15.60 gigaflops 208 1993 von Neumann Cray C90 15.36 gigaflops 16 1993 Eagle Cray C90 7.68 gigaflops 8 1993 Grace Intel Paragon 15.6 gigaflops 209 1993 Babbage IBM RS/6000 SP2 34.05 gigaflops 128 1994 42.56 gigaflops 160 1994 da Vinci SGI Power Challenge 16 1994 SGI Power Challenge XL 11.52 gigaflops 32 1995 Newton Cray J90 7.2 gigaflops 36 1996 Piglet SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 4 gigaflops 8 1997 Turing SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 9.36 gigaflops 24 1997 25 gigaflops 64 1997 Fermi SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 3.12 gigaflops 8 1997 Hopper SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 32 gigaflops 64 1997 Evelyn SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 4 gigaflops 8 1997 Steger SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 64 gigaflops 128 1997 128 gigaflops 256 1998 Lomax SGI Origin 2800/300 MHz 307.2 gigaflops 512 1999 409.6 gigaflops 512 2000 Lou SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 4.68 gigaflops 12 1999 Ariel SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 4 gigaflops 8 2000 Sebastian SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 4 gigaflops 8 2000 SN1-512 SGI Origin 3000/400 MHz 409.6 gigaflops 512 2001 Bright Cray SVe1/500 MHz 64 gigaflops 32 2001 Chapman SGI Origin 3800/400 MHz 819.2 gigaflops 1,024 2001 1.23 teraflops 1,024 2002 Lomax II SGI Origin 3800/400 MHz 409.6 gigaflops 512 2002 Kalpana SGI Altix 3000 2.66 teraflops 512 2003 Cray X1 204.8 gigaflops 2004 Columbia SGI Altix 3000 63 teraflops 10,240 2004 SGI Altix 4700 10,296 2006 85.8 teraflops 13,824 2007 Schirra IBM POWER5+ 4.8 teraflops 640 2007 RT Jones SGI ICE 8200, Intel Xeon "Harpertown" Processors 43.5 teraflops 4,096 2007 Pleiades SGI ICE 8200, Intel Xeon "Harpertown" Processors 487 teraflops 51,200 2008 544 teraflops 56,320 2009 SGI ICE 8200, Intel Xeon "Harpertown"/"Nehalem" Processors 773 teraflops 81,920 2010 SGI ICE 8200/8400, Intel Xeon "Harpertown"/"Nehalem"/"Westmere" Processors 1.09 petaflops 111,104 2011 SGI ICE 8200/8400/X, Intel Xeon "Harpertown"/"Nehalem"/"Westmere"/"Sandy Bridge" Processors 1.24 petaflops 125,980 2012 SGI ICE 8200/8400/X, Intel Xeon "Nehalem"/"Westmere"/"Sandy Bridge"/"Ivy Bridge" Processors 2.87 petaflops 162,496 2013 3.59 petaflops 184,800 2014 SGI ICE 8400/X, Intel Xeon "Westmere"/"Sandy Bridge"/"Ivy Bridge"/"Haswell" Processors 4.49 petaflops 198,432 2014 5.35 petaflops 210,336 2015 SGI ICE X, Intel Xeon "Sandy Bridge"/"Ivy Bridge"/"Haswell"/"Broadwell" Processors 7.25 petaflops 246,048 2016 Endeavour SGI UV 2000, Intel Xeon "Sandy Bridge" Processors 32 teraflops 1,536 2013 Merope SGI ICE 8200, Intel Xeon "Harpertown" Processors 61 teraflops 5,120 2013 SGI ICE 8400, Intel Xeon "Nehalem"/"Westmere" Processors 141 teraflops 1,152 2014 Electra SGI ICE X, Intel Xeon "Broadwell" Processors 1.9 petaflops 1,152 2016 SGI ICE X/HPE SGI 8600 E-Cell, Intel Xeon "Broadwell"/"Skylake" Processors 4.79 petaflops 2,304 2017 8.32 petaflops 3,456 2018 Aitken HPE SGI 8600 E-Cell, Intel Xeon "Cascade Lake" Processors 3.69 petaflops 1,150 2019 Computer Name Architecture Peak Performance Number of CPUs Installation Date
Storage resources
Disk storage In 1987, NAS partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the University of California, Berkeley in the Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) project, which sought to create a storage technology that combined multiple disk drive components into one logical unit. Completed in 1992, the RAID project lead to the distributed data storage technology used today.
The NAS facility currently houses disk mass storage on an SGI parallel DMF cluster with high-availability software consisting of four 32-processor front-end systems, which are connected to the supercomputers and the archival tape storage system. The system has 192 GB of memory per front-end and 7.6 petabytes (PB) of disk cache. Data stored on disk is regularly migrated to the tape archival storage systems at the facility to free up space for other user projects being run on the supercomputers.
Archive and storage systems In 1987, NAS developed the first UNIX-based hierarchical mass storage system, named NAStore. It contained two StorageTek 4400 cartridge tape robots, each with a storage capacity of approximately 1.1 terabytes, cutting tape retrieval time from 4 minutes to 15 seconds.
With the installation of the Pleiades supercomputer in 2008, the StorageTek systems that NAS had been using for 20 years were unable to meet the needs of the greater number of users and increasing file sizes of each project's datasets. In 2009, NAS brought in Spectra Logic T950 robotic tape systems which increased the maximum capacity at the facility to 16 petabytes of space available for users to archive their data from the supercomputers. As of March 2019, the NAS facility increased the total archival storage capacity of the Spectra Logic tape libraries to 1,048 petabytes (or 1 exabyte) with 35% compression. SGI's Data Migration Facility (DMF) and OpenVault manage disk-to-tape data migration and tape-to-disk de-migration for the NAS facility.