High-End Computing Capability
Computing power to answer NASA's complex science and engineering questions
HECC Computing Environment
NASA's High-End Computing Capabilities (HECC) Project provides world-class computing, storage, and visualization resources to users across the nation to accelerate the development of innovative technologies, ensure new scientific discoveries, develop complex engineering systems, and reduce risks in support of NASA missions.
Our integrated environment includes premier computing systems, a vast data management and archive capability, high-speed networks, and an array of support services.
We continuously upgrade and maintain this environment for maximum availability and reliability to help users meet NASA's computational challenges.
HECC Testimonial
"These simulations are providing the Space Shuttle Program with an unprecedented understanding of the aerodynamics during shuttle ascent. These would not be possible without the Columbia supercomputer"
- Stuart Rogers, aerospace engineer, NASA Ames Research Center.
HECC Resources At-a-Glance
Pleiades
View Image- Vital Stats
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- 11,776-node SGI ICE supercluster
112,896 cores total - 1.34 petaflop/s theoretical peak
- 1.09 petaflop/s sustained performance
- 191 terabytes total memory
- 11,776-node SGI ICE supercluster
- Impact
- Pleiades represents NASA’s state-of-the-art technology for conducting modeling and simulation for the agency’s science and engineering missions.
- Factoid
- Pleiades is currently ranked 7th on the TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
Columbia
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- 4-node SGI Altix supercluster
4,608 total cores - 30 teraflop/s theoretical peak
- 9 terabytes total memory
- 4-node SGI Altix supercluster
- Impact
- The Columbia system has made it possible for NASA to achieve breakthroughs in science and engineering for all of the agency’s mission areas, particularly in space exploration.
- Factoid
- When the original Columbia system was installed in 2004, it was ranked second on the list of the top most powerful supercomputers in the world at 63 teraflop/s. Throughout its lifetime the system has delivered over 430 million computational hours.
Storage
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- 2 SGI Altix 4700 storage systems (one 32- and one 64-processor system)
- 115-petabyte (PB) maximum archival storage capability
- 9-PB RAID disk capacity; 17 PB of unique data on tape
- Impact
- The 115-PB Lou tape storage system allows NASA science and engineering users to archive and retrieve important results quickly, reliably, and securely. Copies of users’ data are written to separate tape media in silos located in two different buildings.
- Factoid
- It would take approximately 510 million trees worth of paper to print out the amount of unique data currently stored on NAS’ storage systems (17 PB).
Networks
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- 10-gigabit backbone supporting both 1G and 10G hosts
- 914 total active gigabit Ethernet ports: 838 1-GigE, 76 10-GigE
- 19,080 InfiniBand host connections
- Impact
- NAS network engineers fulfill two important roles: to advance the state-of-the-art in networking, and to evaluate and implement appropriate networking technologies for NASA high-performance computing customers and remote NASA missions.
- Factoid
- NAS supports the world’s largest InfiniBand network, with more than 50 miles of copper and 20 miles of fiber for the facility’s high-speed network connecting Pleiades, hyperwall-2, and storage systems.
Visualization
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- 128-screen tiled LCD wall arranged in 8x16 configuration
- 1,024 AMD Opteron processor cores
- 128 Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 graphics processing units
- 1.5 petabytes dedicated storage
- Impact
- The NAS-developed hyperwall-2 visualization system—one of the largest and most powerful in the world—provides a supercomputer-scale environment allowing users to view and explore their computational results in unprecedented detail and speed.
- Factoid
- The hyperwall-2 comprises nearly a quarter-billion pixels—one of the highest resolution displays in the world today. It is connected to Pleiades via InfiniBand (100 gigabit-per-second connectivity).
