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May 7, 2008 11:51 AM PDT

NASA, Intel, SGI launch supercomputer project

by Mike Yamamoto

NASA, Intel, and SGI announced today that they are collaborating on a groundbreaking initiative that promises to vastly improve performance of the space agency's supercomputer operations, "enabling them to push the limits of scientific discovery."

The space shuttle Atlantis

(Credit: NASA)

Under a joint project dubbed "Pleiades," the three partners plan to develop a modeling and simulation system of unprecedented speed and capacity in the nation's space program. Specifically, they hope to produce computational performance of 1 petaflop (a quadrillion operations per second) by 2009 and 10 petaflops by 2012.

What does that mean, exactly? A task that would take six months to complete on a PC could be done in 1 hour by the Pleiades system, according to an Intel spokesman. Or, put another way, it's analogous to a 6-hour cross-country flight taking just 1 second.

For NASA, the benefits of the initiative are far more than just theoretical: Its predecessor, Project Columbia, allowed engineers to simulate emergencies in time to avoid space shuttle disasters. The partners say there is a green element to Pleiades as well, a goal to design new aircraft that are 70 percent more fuel-efficient than today's models and make only a fraction of the noise.

Originally posted at Crave
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by Commander_Spock May 7, 2008 3:23 PM PDT
Just great.... (Re: The partners say there is a green element to Pleiades as well, a goal to design new aircraft that are 70 percent more fuel-efficient than today's models and make only a fraction of the noise...") How soon before "The CONCORDE" flies commercially - Again. Wow!
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