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New Modular Supercomputing Facility Opens at NASA's Ames Research Center

Click or Touch Image to Zoom and Pan Photo of NASA officials cutting the ribbon to open the Modular Supercomputing Facilityh at NASA Ames
Ribbon cutting event at the new Modular Supercomputing Facility at NASA's Ames Research Center on August 22, 2019. From left to right: Wiliam Thigpen, High-End Computing Capability Project Manager; Carol Carroll, NASA Ames Deputy Center Director; Tsengdar Lee, High-End Computing Program Manager; Eugene Tu, NASA Ames Center Director; Piyush Mehrotra, Chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Divisionl David Korsmeyer, NASA Ames Associate Center Director, Research and Technology; and Rupak Biswas, NASA Ames Director of Exploration Technology. Derek Shaw, NASA/Ames

The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division is celebrating the grand opening of its new modular supercomputing facility, built at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The facility houses the agency’s newest petascale supercomputer, named Aitken, to help solve the agency’s most challenging problems in an environmentally conscious way that also provides flexibility, power efficiency, and cost savings.

Aitken is housed in the initial module of the facility, located at a newly developed one-acre site that includes the infrastructure to support a total of 16 modules for computers and data storage. This expansion capability points to a significant benefit of using the modular approach: the ability to quickly construct additional modules and add computing power to meet changing priorities and new challenges for the agency.

The facility’s first module uses an energy-efficient cooling technology uniquely suited to the San Francisco Bay Area’s temperate weather. A combination of outdoor air, fan technology, and a circulating water system removes the heat generated by the computer’s processors; two adiabatic coolers adjacent to the module send chilled water to the system’s computer racks

The new modular facility follows on the success of a prototype facility, built in 2016 and expanded in 2017, which houses NASA’s Electra supercomputer. In fiscal 2018, the modular approach saved approximately 2 million kilowatt-hours of power and over 3 million gallons of water, when compared to what would be used if the hardware had been installed on NAS’s traditional computer floor.

With NASA’s ever-increasing demand for more computing resources, the modular supercomputing approach significantly reduces the annual water and energy consumption needed to maintain these systems. The resulting cost savings translate to purchasing power for additional capabilities to deliver world-class supercomputing for the more than 1,500 users across the U.S. who rely on NASA high-end computing to make new scientific discoveries and expand human knowledge.