NASA/Industry News
May 24, 1999
SGI and NASA to Collaborate on
Supercomputing Technology
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, May 18 -- SGI has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NASA to collaborate on developing advanced supercomputing technology. The MOU provides a framework for cooperative R&D on a variety of information-technology projects, which may include computational modeling for astrobiology and virtual-surgery techniques for extended space missions.
"We are very excited to be working with SGI toward the advancement of information technology," said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. "This agreement is of great importance to key NASA projects such as astrobiology, which will look at fundamental human questions concerning the origin and evolution of life."
Proposed areas of collaboration between SGI and NASA include:
- development of large-scale supercomputing applications and support tools optimized for multi-level parallelism;
- development of operating-systems technology that increases the utilization of these large computing systems;
- development of techniques and features to minimize the impacts of low-level component failure.
"There is tremendous synergy between SGI and NASA, especially in our supercomputing goals," said Richard E. Belluzzo, SGI chairman and CEO. "While primarily intended to significantly advance NASA's most computationally challenging science and engineering projects, this collaboration will also assist SGI in defining systems appropriate to commercially viable high-performance computing."
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"Steger" -- built and programmed by SGI and NASA -- was the world's first working 256-processor supercomputer.
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NASA and SGI have a recent history of collaboration in supercomputing technology In November 1998, NASA Ames Research Center began testing "Steger" -- a 256-processer Origin2000 supercomputer built and programmed by a NASA-SGI team. SGI assembled the system, and NASA Ames developed the program that enabled Steger to solve some of the most complex aeronautical problems ever attempted. According to Tom Lasinski, an Ames computer scientist, this supercomputer holds the potential to trim months from the design of a new airplane. "Steger can also make higher fidelity computer simulations of aircraft more cost-effectively than other supercomputers," he said.
"Following our successful joint deployment of a 256-processor Origin system -- the first of its kind -- at NASA Ames, we are extremely pleased to extend this close and valuable relationship to significantly larger and more extensible computing systems," said John R. (Beau) Vrolyk, senior vice president of SGI's Computing Systems Business Unit.