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2005 NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS
07.19.05 - Impact of Columbia Supercomputer Recognized at ISC
During the 20th annual International ISC held Supercomputing Conference (ISC) June 21-24, 2005, in Heidelberg, Germany, the Columbia supercomputer's impact on the high-performance computing community was highlighted in several presentations.
One talk given by NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division Chief Walt Brooks featured the impact of Columbia on the agency's mission, specifically the system's role in supporting Return to Flight efforts and the New Horizons mission -- the first mission to Pluto and its moon, Charon, scheduled for launch in January 2006.
Computational capabilities of Columbia, the 10,240-processor SGI Altix system housed at the NAS facility, enable scientists to solve problems and address coding issues quickly and more efficiently than with previous architectures. In fact, access to this asset has changed how scientists and engineers approach their research. Brooks highlighted some recent applications of high-resolution modeling in solar and Colliding Galaxy modeling, used to help guide mission design and operations strategies.
A second presentation delivered by one of NASA's major industry partners, SGI, delved into optimization of the Linpack benchmark run on Columbia. This paper was selected for a best paper award.
Complementing these presentations, Thomas Sterling of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory gave an invitational talk, recognizing NASA for reinventing its approach to high-end computing, and deploying one of the most successful "constellation" supercomputers in history. A constellation computer is one in which the number of processors in a fat node is much larger than the number of nodes. For Columbia these number are 512 and 20 respectively.
Held at the Heidelberg Convention Center, home to one of the oldest universities and most modern research facilities, ISC is the leading supercomputing event in Europe. Along with technical experts showcasing exhibits from prominent supercomputing centers all over the world, ISC provides researchers, academics, and industry leaders with the most up-to-date information on state-of-the art applications, architectures, and trends in supercomputing. This year's conference marked the 20th anniversary of ISC and the largest attendance in the conference's history with more than 650 participants.
NASA's Columbia supercomputer, which was built in a record 120 days and now has over 600 users doing critical work for the agency's shuttle Return to Flight program is the number three system on the Top 500 supercomputers list, just behind two IBM Blue Gene systems. Columbia placed second on the list in November 2004.
+ ISC Website
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NEWS ARCHIVE
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