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2005 NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS
Project Columbia Wins GCN Agency Award for Innovation
On October 11, 2005, NASA's Project Columbia team was awarded a 2005 Government Computer News (GCN) Agency Award for Innovation at the annual GCN Awards Gala in Washington, D.C. Project Columbia lead, William Thigpen, was on hand at the prestigious black-tie event to accept the award on behalf of the team.
Caption: Above, from left to right: Bill Thigpen (Ames), David Barkai (Intel), Bart Heisey (Intel), and Anthony Robbins (SGI) at GCN Award Gala on October 11, 2005 in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Intel)
The Project Columbia team, comprised primarily of computer scientists and engineers from the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, and major NASA industry partners Silicon Graphics, Inc. and Intel Corp, built and deployed a 10,240-processor SGI Altix supercomputer in an unprecedented 120 days. This system, named "Columbia," simultaneously supports all four NASA Mission Directorates and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center.
This world-class system was procured, integrated, and brought online by the NAS Division to meet NASA's pressing demands for greater high-end computing capabilities to solve problems unique to the agency: emergency capabilities such as those needed to investigate the February 2003 space shuttle accident; returning the shuttle to service; feasibility studies for making critical in-flight repairs during future space missions; and the Presiden'ts Vision for Exploration to return to the moon and Mars. Columbia has increased the agency's computing capacity ten-fold, and almost
instantly began meeting science and engineering challenges not previously possible.
From a field of 132 nominations, the Columbia project was one of just 10 selected by Post Newsweek' s editorial team to receive this coveted honor. Winners were selected from a pool of nominees from U.S. federal, state, and local government organizations based on their excellence in applying information technology, supporting program or policy requirements, and improving service delivery.
In addition to the awards ceremony, which drew approximately 1,000 attendees from both industry and government, NASA was recognized in a special October 10th edition of Government Computer News.
- Holly A. Amundson
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NEWS ARCHIVE
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