The Quarterly Publication of the NASA 

Advanced Supercomputing Division

The evolution of high-performance computers at the

NAS Facility is chronicled beginning on page 1A

Launching Jobs Into Grid Space – 4

Special Section: NAS High-Performance Computer History – 1A

Identifying Organic Molecules: The Link To Our Beginnings – 6

Spring 2002

www.nas.nasa.gov
Vol. 3, No. 1 • Spring 2002

Executive Editor: John Ziebarth

Editor: Nicholas A. Veronico

Writers: Holly A. Amundson

Jill A. Dunbar

Graphic Designer: Sue Kim

Illustrator: Gail Felchle

Photographer: Michael Boswell

Contact the Editor:

Nicholas A. Veronico

Gridpoints

M/S 258-6

Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000

Tel. (650) 604-3046

Fax (650) 604-4377

nveronico@mail.arc.nasa.gov

Gridpoints is a quarterly publication of the NASA

Advanced Supercomputing Division at NASA

Ames Research Center. The division’s staff includes

government employees and contractors from

Advanced Management Technology Inc., Computer Sciences Corp., Cray Inc., Eloret, Raytheon Co.,

and SGI.

Gridpoints acknowledges that some words, model

names and designations mentioned herein are the

property of the trademark holder. Gridpoints uses

them for identification purposes only.

The staff of Gridpoints would like to

thank the following people for their assistance in preparing this publication:

Dick Anderson, Bill Arasin, Ron Bailey,

Galina Chaban, Bob Ciotti, Jill Dunbar,

Chris Gong, T.R. Govindan, John

Hardman, Tom Hinke, Winifred Huo,

Dennis Jespersen, Julie Jervis, Cetin

Kiris, Chris Kleiber, Art Lazanoff, Tony

Lisotta, Gina Morello-Ficcadenti,

George Myers, Alan Powers, Marcia

Redmond, Stuart Rogers, Ryan Spaulding,

Ron Sykora, Jim Taft, Leigh Ann

Tanner, Mark Tangney, Malu Trehan,

Bill Van Dalsem, Rob Van Der

Wijngaart, Cliff Williams

On The Cover:

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The Quarterly Publication of the NASA 

Advanced Supercomputing Division 4

1A

6

Features

The Evolution of HighPerformance Computers

at the NAS Facility

The NAS Division has been a leader in

high-performance computing since its

inception in the mid-1980s. In this

special section we examine the supercomputers operated by the division.

Nicholas A. Veronico

NAS operates a 1,024-processor SGI Origin 3800, the largest single system image

high-performance computer in the world. This is the most powerful computer used

by NASA scientists to date. For more, turn to page 1A. (NASA/Tom Trower)

Identifying Organic Molecules:

The Link to Our Beginnings

Computational chemists in the

NAS Division are developing a

theoretical model to generate

accurate data of amino acids,

which will help astronomers

identify molecules observed in the

interstellar medium.

Holly A. Amundson

Launching Jobs Into

Grid Space

Information Power Grid users can now send

jobs to any IPG resource through the recently developed grid portal, Launch Pad.

Holly A. Amundson

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Boeing Analyzes Sonic

Cruiser Using NASA 

CFD Software

The Boeing Company is now using

an array of NASA-developed software packages to analyze different designs of their Sonic Cruiser airplane: the

NASA Overset CFD Software (which

includes the Overflow flow solver),

Chimera Grid Tools, and Pegasus5. 

As reported in the February 11, 2002

issue of Aviation Week and Space

Technology (page 47), Boeing is extensively using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to analyze the airplane’s

design, reducing the amount of wind

tunnel testing needed. 

Boeing plans to use only four highspeed wind tunnel testing sessions during the design of the Sonic Cruiser –

two or three fewer sessions than would

be required without the use of CFD.

Fewer tests translates to significant savings of both time and money – a round

of wind tunnel testing can take up to

one year to complete. 

“This represents significant cost savings

to Boeing’s multi-billion dollar Sonic

Cruiser aircraft design effort. It will also

mean that the aircraft will be able to

enter service much sooner,” said Stuart

Rogers, aerospace engineer and codeveloper of Pegasus5 and the Chimera

This is my last column as NAS Division Chief as I will be leaving NASA to become Los Alamos National Laboratories’ division director of Computer and Computational Sciences. This

career change is quite an opportunity for me, but I have very

mixed feelings about leaving such a successful organization, and the colleagues and

friends with whom I have worked. I’m very proud of the NAS division, its history and legacy, and am honored to have been entrusted with managing the division

during the last three and a half years. Let me review some of the things that the

NAS staff has accomplished, and the reason that I am proud to have been part of

the division.

Starting from the early days of computational aeronautical design in the late 1960s

and ’70s, precursor organizations at Ames Research Center married numerical

solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations with the largest computers of the day – the

ILLIAC IV, various Control Data Corp. machines, and cousins from IBM and

others. This was really the birthplace of numerical fluid dynamics, and laid the

groundwork for the next 20 years. The division was formed in the early 1980s

from these efforts and introduced the era of vector supercomputing to computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Many of the well-known procedures and services for

running a large scientific supercomputing center were developed right here and

presented to the rest of the world as a by-product of pushing the limits in computing, while machines like the entire family of Crays graced our shop floor.

This “pathfinding” role took NAS into the era of parallel supercomputing starting

in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Researchers explored a variety of paths to determine the future of scientific computing, experimenting with machines from Intel,

SGI, the Thinking Machines Corp. and IBM (see the special section on NAS computers beginning on page 1A). The most promising research computers were then

made available to thousands of scientists and engineers across the country.

In the last several years, the science and engineering performed on these machines

has broadened far beyond CFD. The expertise gained from CFD has been applied

in many computational sciences and multiplied the value of the original aeronautics work many-fold. Eminent Earth scientists are being assisted in global climate

modeling; computational biologists are exploring the origins of life; and nanotechnology researchers are investigating the construction of devices in this new area of

science. All of this is made possible by developments in the science of highperformance computing – ranging from new hardware architectures, middleware,

visualization and data tools, and new algorithms and applications.

The NAS Division continues its quest for new developments in computer science

and is forging the way in two new areas that will be central to the next decade:

shared-memory parallel supercomputers and distributed high-performance computing. Both of these areas complement each other as we are now seeing the largest,

most powerful supercomputers drawn together in a greater distributed scientific

resource – the grid.

As I take my leave from NAS, I want everyone to know that I am proud to have

been part of this organization, and I see it continuing to be a leading player in the

field of high-performance computing. 

Bill Feiereisen

From The Division Chief

NAS Mission

To lead the country in the research,

development, and delivery of revolutionary, high-end computing services

and technologies, such as applications

and algorithms, tools, system software, and hardware to facilitate NASA

mission success.

Gridpoints 1

Continued on page 2

News

From

NAS
Grid Tools software, from the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division.

NASA Overset CFD software has been used to run hundreds

of CFD calculations in the past year at Boeing. The high

quality of the software, coupled with the automated CFD

processes, makes it possible to turn around design test results

quickly and accurately. “We had a lot of confidence in the

CFD, and the first high-speed wind tunnel test results were

very close to what CFD predicted,” explained Walt Gillette,

Boeing Sonic Cruiser program manager. 

NAS Scientist Co-develops 

Unique Load-Balancing Solution

NAS Division scientist Rupak Biswas has co-developed a

novel load-balancing algorithm for scientific applications. The method is described in “Parallel Processing of

Adaptive Meshes with Load Balancing,” which appeared in the

December 2001 issue of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and

Distributed Systems (TPDS). Biswas collaborated with Sajal

Das and Daniel Harvey, University of Texas at Arlington.

The development team’s goal was to create a load-balancing

algorithm that also minimized interprocessor communication and data redistribution delays for unstructured grids.

Many scientific applications involving grids lack a uniform

underlying structure. These applications are often also dynamic in nature in that the grid structure changes significantly between successive phases of execution on computers.

Mesh adaptation of unstructured grids through selective

refinement and coarsening has proven effective in solving

complex computational problems. However, an approach

using parallel processors is complicated because of frequent

load-balancing requirements. Traditional dynamic load balancers are for the most part inadequate because they lack a

global view of system loads across processors. The team’s

paper describes a general-purpose load balancer that utilizes

symmetric broadcast networks (SBN) as the underlying communication topology.

Comparisons with PLUM (Parallel Load-balancing for adaptive Unstructured Meshes), a NAS-developed global load-balancing framework, shows that this SBN-based load balancer

achieves lower redistribution overhead for dynamic irregular

applications by overlapping processing and data migration.

Cart3D Used to Study Man-Portable

Surface-to-Air Missiles

Scientists in the NAS Division’s Applications Branch have

extended the capabilities of NASA’s Cart3D aerodynamic analysis software to simulate the unsteady flight of

infrared-guided, man-portable surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

The simulations are being used to analyze the aerodynamic

performance characteristics of these SAMs.

In the late 1970s, these portable SAMs proved highly effective against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Since then, these

weapons have been sold by the thousands on the black market to various terrorist organizations around the world.

While they are very inexpensive to purchase, these missiles

have unique flight characteristics that make them difficult to

simulate computationally. 

NAS researchers Michael Aftosmis and Scott Murman conducted steady and unsteady simulations of controlled flight

for representative SAMs on both the 1,024-processor and

512-CPU SGI Origin 3000 systems at the NAS facility at

Ames Research Center. More than 720 steady simulations were

run on meshes totaling almost 2.4 billion cells.

Two years ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

Missile and Space Intelligence Center enlisted the help of

NASA and other research organizations to numerically simulate such missiles. The information gained will enable DIA

to develop effective measures for countering the threat to

civilian and military aircraft posed by terrorists armed with

such missiles. 

“Results from preliminary NAS studies presented to the DIA

have been met with enthusiastic support,” said Aftosmis. The

steady and unsteady results have shed new light on the flight

characteristics of these missiles. Analysts at DIA have relied

on early versions of NASA’s Cart3D package for several years,

and they have already begun to incorporate results from the

preliminary NAS Division studies with their in-house studies. Analyses like these allow DIA personnel to plan effective

evasive maneuvers for aircraft targeted by these missiles, and

support other counter-terrorist work. 

The Cart3D package permits end-to-end simulation of inviscid three-dimensional flows around complex vehicles. The

parallel analysis code in Cart3D (“flowCart”) was developed

under NASA’s former High Performance Computing and

Communications Program, and is well suited to these computations because it scales very well on parallel shared-memory hardware. In addition, many computations can be

launched simultaneously to rapidly fill out test matrices.

Cart3D was developed at Ames and New York University

and is available through the NASA Ames Commercial

Technology Office.

IPG Workshop Highlights 

Collaboration, Web Services

R esearchers from across the U.S. gathered recently to

discuss the current state of NASA’s geographically distributed computational network, the Information Power

Grid (IPG). At the third annual IPG workshop, held

News From NAS

2 Gridpoints

Continued from page 1
December 4-5 in Palo Alto, Calif., more than 100 computer scientists from academic institutions, government labs,

and NASA centers learned about recent developments in

grid technology. Thirty scientists presented the state of their

research and the development progress of IPG infrastructure

components. Peer feedback, problem solving, and networking allowed researchers to address problems encountered in

developing new web tools and applications for the IPG. 

Kicking off the two-day event, former NAS Division Chief

Bill Feiereisen emphasized the importance of collaboration.

“I think it is important to realize that even though this is

NASA’s IPG workshop, the IPG is part of an entire grid

effort throughout the United States, and throughout Europe,

and the Asian Pacific Rim – I want to make it really evident

that we are doing this all together. Many levels of many different organizations are working toward the same goal of

merging efforts into a single grid.” 

Although presenters came from various institutions and

reported on different topics, there was a central theme and

direction to all presentations. “It’s pretty clear that the area of

web services is going to be the hot topic this year in grids.

There was quite a bit of discussion in all of the talks about

what web services are,” said Tony Lisotta, NAS Division IPG

task leader. 

Among the presenters were: Geoffrey Fox, Indiana

University, who discussed the need to define interfaces for

web applications to facilitate computer-to-computer interactions in “Peer to Peer Networks and Web Services for a

Community Grid”; George Myers, NASA Ames Research

Center, outlined recent developments in LaunchPad, a web

portal created to enable grid users to submit jobs to IPG

resources via any web browser; and Robert Griffin, NASA

Glenn Research Center, who discussed interactive online job

submission for monitoring and modeling aircraft through

the Aviation Safety Program. 

One outcome of the workshop: a new collaboration was

formed at the workshop between NASA’s IPG and the

National Virtual Observatory (NVO) project. The NVO

project aims to make images of the night sky captured with

powerful telescopesavailable to individual astronomers.

NVO would like to provide high-powered computational

resources necessary to process the data. It is this sort of

collaboration that enables the IPG to grow and expand on

its capabilities. 

NAS Division senior scientist Tom Hinke summed up the

event: “I thought the workshop was extremely successful.

We had good participation from the general grid community this year, and I hope to see more applications people at

future workshops.”

CFD Cycle Time Flies with 

Pegasus5 Software

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) cycle time just got

shorter with the newly improved Pegasus5 code. Codeveloper Stuart Rogers, an aerospace engineer in the

NAS Division, recently applied this code to a difficult and

complex configuration – a complete Boeing 777-200 highlift aircraft.

Starting with existing volume grids, Rogers was able to construct the entire overset grid-system in only three days – a calculation that took 32 days to accomplish in 1998 using the

previous version of the software, Pegasus4.

“This speed-up in CFD cycle time and reduction in user

expertise requirements will significantly reduce the cost of

applying viscous CFD methods to complex design and

analysis problems,” Rogers said. 

The Pegasus5 software is used to perform the preprocessing

task of linking together a large number of randomly overset

grids. All that is required to use Pegasus5 is the OVERFLOW

input file and the volume grids. During the past year, significant enhancements were made to the software, including

algorithm improvements, bug fixes, and parallelization.

These advances enable Pegasus5 to perform calculations days

sooner than Pegasus4.

Rogers plans to continue enhancements on the most recent

version of Pegasus, making additional algorithm improvements to increase the code’s automation and robustness.

www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 3

Rob F. Van Der Wijngaart, NAS Division computer scientist,

presented his research on Grid benchmarking at the third

annual IPG workshop held in December. (N. Veronico)
4 Gridpoints

Running jobs using the distributed resources of

NASA’s Information Power Grid (IPG) can be

accomplished with an easy-to-use job-launching

tool. Working in conjunction with developers at Lawrence

Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), researchers in the

NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division’s portal

development group designed the IPG LaunchPad for the

grid. LaunchPad enables users to create and submit jobs,

track job progress, and select resources – all from a web browser. This web-based interface, or portal, also enables researchers to transfer files remotely and, with limited capability, customize their view of the tool to meet individual needs. 

“The vision for LaunchPad is that it will enable

NASA scientists and engineers to access remote IPG

resources, including computers, data archives,

instruments, and software resources – all with a single log-in from any desktop computer,” says Arsi

Vaziri, IPG deputy project manager. IPG

LaunchPad was designed using the Grid Portal

Development Kit developed by Jason Novotny,

formerly with the National Computational Science

Alliance, now at LBL. 

The job launching tool consists of easy-to-use windows, which prompt researchers to input information about their jobs. LaunchPad was designed with

users in mind – it requires a minimal amount of

password entries, reducing a researcher’s workload

while also maintaining security. 

Just Right for Users

“IPG LaunchPad is an evolutionary tool and we

plan to make enhancements as needed. For example,

examining the environment and automatically running a job on the resource where it will run soonest,

or providing a shell-like environment that allows the

user to run simple commands such as familiar shell

commands without having to wait in a batch

queue,” explains IPG team member George Myers.

LaunchPad is still in the formative stage – the team is working to make it more intuitive. The LaunchPad tool is currently capable of running batch jobs on the grid, securely

transferring files, displaying current job status information,

and, to a minor extent, creating a customizable environment.

Developing a tool that can be fully modified to fit user needs

will require a user profile database to store each person’s preferences. LaunchPad also enables users to view old output and

previously run jobs.

Launching Jobs Into Grid Space

Information Power Grid users can now send jobs to any IPG resource

through the recently developed grid portal, LaunchPad.

Continued on page 5

The Information Power Grid’s (IPG) homepage provides users with recent

news about the grid effort, information for users new to the grid environment, statistics about the resources available on the grid, frequently asked

questions, IPG user support, and much more. A link to the LaunchPad

grid portal is located in the upper right corner of the IPG website. To access

the job launching tool, users must have a valid certificate.
The NAS Division has been a leader

in high-performance computing since

its inception in the mid-1980s.

The Evolution of 

High-Performance Computers

in the

NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division
The vision for what is today the NASA Advanced

Supercomputing (NAS) Division began to materialize in the late 1970s. Scientists at NASA Ames

Research Center were pioneering computational fluid

dynamics (CFD) under the leadership of Hans Mark, then

Ames center director. Mark had witnessed the dramatic

advances in nuclear reactor design enabled by computers,

and those beginning to be applied to climate modeling, while

working at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. He strongly believed that the promise of computers could be used to develop what he called a “numerical wind tunnel” to solve such problems as airflow over an air- or spacecraft in a variety of flight

attitudes, using Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensions.

From Mark’s numerical wind tunnel concept, NAS scientists

have worked with industry to develop supercomputers capable of solving unsteady 3-D Navier-Stokes equations as well

as complex computations in aerospace, nanotechnology, datamining problems, computational chemistry interactions, and

challenges in climate simulations and turbulence modeling.

In 1978 a cadre of Ames researchers, F. Ron Bailey, K.G.

Stevens Jr., Wayne Hathaway, and Ray Lim, were tasked with

formulating the requirements for the numerical wind tunnel

concept, selecting computer architectures to solve 3-D

Navier-Stokes equations, and selling the idea to Congress,

NASA, and the aerospace industry. “CFD was looked at as a

way of getting design information that you could not get, or

could not get efficiently, in a wind tunnel,” recalls Bailey,

NAS’s division chief from its inception through July 1990.

“Of particular interest was transsonic flow. In the military

sense, tactics had changed from the 1950s idea of flying

supersonically to attack one’s enemy with a missile,” Bailey

explains. Vietnam showed that pilots had to slow down to

transsonic speeds to maneuver and attack. Thus, the military

needed aircraft that were more maneuverable and flew better

at transsonic speeds where the actual combat occurred. At

the same time, jet transport aircraft were bumping up against

the transsonic drag rise (at Mach .85 aircraft develop local

regions of supersonic flow that causes increased drag), which

happens to be the optimum range for a given fuel load and

weight. 

“It is very difficult to get transsonic design data, and it is difficult to obtain in the wind tunnel because you have ventilation – and the tunnel’s walls as well as the model support

generate interference. In addition, Navier-Stokes equations

are mathematically challenging because they are very strongly non-linear problems. Mathematicians just simply could

not solve the problem, so it had to be solved with computers,” Bailey says. The vision was to use computers capable of

calculating CFD datasets to enable researchers to make a variety of changes to an aerospace vehicle’s design quickly and

cheaply. Once a favorable design was selected, a model could

be built and used to validate the design’s performance in a

wind tunnel.

Researchers developing the NAS Program envisioned a single

facility housing supercomputers, the scientists using the

machine, and support personnel. This facility would serve as

the hub for the high-performance computing community of

NASA, the Department of Defense, universities, and the

U.S. aerospace industry. 

“From 1976 to 1979, a series of studies were conducted producing baseline configurations, a functional design, and

rough estimates of cost and schedule for the NAS program,”

2A Gridpoints

NASA scientists believed that computers

could more accurately represent fluid

flows over an air- or spacecraft without

the inherent flow interruptions of the

wind tunnel’s walls and the model support (below). Also, computers would

enable rapid design changes without the

cost of building a new model. At left,

streamlines around a high-resolution (16

million point), 113 zone model of the

Space Shuttle Launch Vehicle (SSLV)

depict air flow around and between the

craft’s bodies. A solution of this resolution

required 110 hours on the Cray C90.

(Left: dataset courtesy Reynaldo J.

Gomez/NASA Johnson Space Center;

Visualization by Timothy A. Sandstrom/

NASA Ames using GEL software.

Below: NASA/Ames)
says Bailey. “In September 1980, two parallel design-definition contracts

were awarded, and almost two years later, in April 1982, the contractors’

proposals for detailed design, development, and construction were submitted for evaluation. It soon became clear that the earlier approaches needed

to be changed. First, computational aerodynamics had advanced rapidly,

and it was deemed necessary to not only establish, but to sustain a state-ofthe-art computational aerodynamics facility. Also, supercomputers had

advanced to the point that it was no longer considered necessary to directly subsidize their future development. 

“As a result,” Bailey continues, “a new NAS program plan was developed in

February 1983. The NAS Program was defined by three principal goals: to

provide a national computational capability as a necessary element in ensuring continuing leadership in CFD and related disciplines; to act as a

pathfinder in advanced, large-scale computer system capability through the

incorporation of state-of-the-art improvements in computer hardware and

software technologies; and to provide a powerful research tool for NASA’s

Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology.”

NAS Takes Shape

The core of the NAS Division’s researchers came from the CFD branch at

Ames. Operations began with the acquisition of a Cray XMP-12 (12 standing for one CPU – central processing unit, and two Megawords of internal

memory), delivered in August 1984. This Cray was used for initial system

integration and to test the Unix operating system on a supercomputer. The

X-MP at NAS was the first Unix-based Cray supercomputer delivered by

the company, and was the first to be interfaced with Unix workstations. It

enabled researchers to compute low-resolution, steady-state 3-D problems

such as air flow over an aircraft’s wings in various flight attitudes. 

In April 1985, NAS partnered with Cray Research Inc. and the National

Magnetic Fusion Energy Computer Center (NMFECC), Livermore, Calif.,

to acquire a single CPU Cray-2. The machine was located at NMFECC,

and each partner had eight hours of daily access. 

The division acquired its first Cray 2, serial number 2002, on September

30, 1985. The machine was housed at the Ames Computer Processing

Facility. “This was the first Cray 2 delivered with a 256-megaword memory, which was larger than the memory installed in all previous Cray

machines delivered – combined,” Bailey says. 

To honor the pioneers of science and aerospace, division management

began the tradition of naming its computers – large machines after mathematicians and physicists, and smaller machines after prominent figures in

aviation. Thus, Cray 2, serial number 2002, was named Navier, in honor of

Claude Louis Marie Henri Navier (1785– 1836), a French professor of

applied mechanics who co-developed the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid

dynamics for incompressible fluids and viscous fluids.

Users across the United States were linked to the NAS Division’s computers through a high-speed, long-haul communications subsystem known as

NASnet. This network became operational in July 1985, using the data

transfer protocol TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/Internet protocol), which later became the standard that enabled the development of the

Internet. NASA’s Dryden (California), Langley (Virginia), and Glenn

(Ohio) Research Centers, industry, academia, and numerous government

agencies connected to NASnet through the Department of Defense’s

MILnet (military network) and ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects

www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 3A

NAS Computer Names

Continued on page 4A

The NAS Division honors its scientific heritage

by naming its high-performance computers after

pioneering people in aviation, mathematics,

space, and computing. The following figures, both

contemporary and historic, and their namesake

machines are listed below.

Amelia (VAX 11/780)

Named for pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart

(1897–1937) who was the first woman and the

second person to fly solo across the Atlantic on

the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s

historic 1927 crossing. 

Babbage (IBM SP-2)

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) is considered

the grandfather of the digital computer. He

believed that a computing machine must be

composed of an input device (he used a card

reader), a memory device (he called “The

Store”), a central processing unit (he called “The

Mill”) and an output device (he used a printer).

BJ (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

Vilhelm Frimann Koren Bjerknes (1862–

1951) was a Norwegian physicist and pioneer

in modern meteorology. He worked on applying hydrodynamic and thermodynamic theories toward predicting future weather conditions. His work in meteorology and on electric

waves was important in the early development

of wireless telegraphy. Bjerknes developed a

theory of cyclones, known as the polar front

theory, with his son Jakob Aall Bonnevie

Bjerknes (1897-1975).

Boltzmann (Thinking Machine CM5)

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844–1906)

Austrian physicist known for his work in thermodynamics and on the kinetic theory of gases.

Bright (Cray SV-1)

Loren G. Bright (1924–) joined the National

Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor to NASA, in 1947, and served as

Director of Research Support at Ames from

1969 until his retirement in 1979. During his

nine-year tenure as a director, Bright managed

computer systems development and operations; manufacturing; physical plant maintenance; and the construction of new research
facilities at the center. As an early advocate for

supercomputing’s potential benefit to NASA,

Bright worked through the agency’s Institute

for Advanced Computation to develop and

secure funding for both near- and long-term

research programs at Ames. Bright was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal

in 1978.

Chapman (SGI Origin 3800)

Under Dr. Dean Chapman’s (1922–1995) guidance as director of Ames’ Thermo and Gas

Dynamics Division (1969), and later Director

of Astronautics (1974), Ames developed thermal protection systems for the Space Shuttle,

Galileo Jupiter probe, and many other vehicles.

His creation of the Computational Fluid

Dynamics Branch at Ames in 1970, using the

best available high-speed computers at that

time, assured the center’s preeminence in that

new and exciting field of research. The first

“massively parallel” computer of its time, the

Illiac IV, was installed at Ames in 1970 and,

under Chapman’s leadership, became operational in 1973.

Chuck (Convex 3820)

Brig. Gen. Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager (USAF

Retired, 1923–) logged more than 10,000

hours in 180 different military aircraft, including foreign and experimental rocket aircraft. In

1947, Yeager exceeded Mach 1 at Edwards Air

Force Base, California, piloting the X-1.

da Vinci (SGI Power Challenge XL)

This workstation cluster was named for sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and scientist

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).

Dixon0 (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

Dixon Butler is the former NASA EOS Project

scientist and a major advocate for supercomputing and data servicing in Earth Sciences. He

became chief scientist of the GLOBE (Global

Learning and Observations to Benefit the

Environment) Program.

Eagle (Cray C90)

Named for the first manned space capsule to

land on the Moon. “The Eagle has landed.”

These words ushered in a new era of human

exploration on July 20, 1969, as the first

Agency network), NSFnet (National Science Foundation network),

BARRnet (Bay Area Regional Research network connecting University of

California campuses at Berkeley, Davis, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz, plus

Stanford University), as well as the San Diego Supercomputer Center. NASnet brought the power of supercomputers to researchers in the fields of aerodynamics, astrophysics, life sciences, turbulence modeling, as well as computational fluid dynamics and computational chemistry across the United States.

During its first eight months of operation (July 1986 through February

1987), NAS’s Cray 2 supported 123 projects: 30 percent were devoted to

research for the National AeroSpace Plane (a Reagan-era conceptual airliner/

spacecraft powered by hydrogen burning supersonic-combustion ramjets),

42 percent to aerodynamics, and 11 percent to turbulence modeling. The

remaining 17 percent was dedicated to astrophysics, chemistry, atmospheric,

and life sciences. When accessing the Cray 2’s entire 256-megaword memory to solve a 3-D Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes equation using in-core

memory, the machine could calculate 10.24 million floating points in 24

hours. This was an impressive number for its day – in comparison, the NAS

Division’s high-performance computers can now calculate more than 200

million points per day.

NAS Becomes a Production Facility

The vision of the numerical wind tunnel became a reality on March 1, 1987.

A 90,000 square-foot facility was built at Ames Research Center to house the

division’s supercomputers, researchers, and support personnel. This facility

was constructed on the north side of Ames, and began operations on

March 1, 1987. Eight days later, then NASA Administrator James C.

Fletcher dedicated the new NAS Facility, which housed the Cray 2 Navier,

and the newly delivered Thinking Machines CM2, Pierre. The CM-2 was an

experimental, single instruction, multiple data machine employed by the

NAS advanced development laboratory to study the interaction between

high-speed parallel processors. 

The following January, a second Cray 2, Stokes, was installed at the NAS

Facility – essentially doubling production computing power. In addition to

providing researchers with more capability, both Cray 2s were used to develop and test a variety of new supercomputer software. NAS computer scientists also established the NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB), which became

the industry’s standard for measuring the performance of parallel computing architectures. 

On August 30, 1988, the very first Cray Y-MP/832 (8 CPUs and 32

Megawords of internal memory), Reynolds, was delivered to NAS. After initial testing and a pre-production phase, Reynolds was added to the produc4A Gridpoints

Continued on page 5A

Continued from page 3A
tion pool on February 15, 1989. Reynolds, in comparison, could solve an

unsteady 3-D Navier-Stokes equation 60 percent faster than the three-yearold Cray 2 Navier. 

Two Cray C90s (von Neumann and Eagle) arrived at NAS in the spring and

early summer of 1993. In February 1996, a Cray J90, Newton, was added to

the NAS production pool. These machines provided the majority of the production computing cycles for the remainder of the decade. Von Neumann,

installed in March 1993, was operated by the NAS Division until March

2002. Operating and maintenance costs, as well as a shortage of spare parts,

drove the decision to retire the machine, which was replaced by a Cray SV1ex.

Experimental Machines Play an Important Role

While the Cray machines worked day-in and day-out to provide computing

cycles to researchers, the advanced development team was experimenting

with an Intel Touchstone iPSC/860, the Thinking Machines Corporation’s

massively parallel CM5, and the Intel Paragon, which offered improved

interconnects when compared to the iPSC860. An IBM SP-2, Babbage,

joined the experimental machine pool during the summer of 1994. It was

similar to the Thinking Machines CM5 architecture, where each processor

operated on its own with a separate set of instructions. But administration

and upgrading of the SP-2 was always a challenge, and the machine’s complexity, coupled with the advances of other supercomputers, quickly made

this machine obsolete.

Programming the majority of these experimental systems was extremely

complex, making them unsuitable for the production computing environment. In addition, their computational speeds were constrained, and their

compilers were not compatible with production-quality codes.

The evolution of supercomputers from 1975 to 1995 has been compared to

the early days of the automobile industry, which saw cars with three wheels;

combustion engines; steam engines; driver on the right, in the middle, on

the left; hard tops, soft tops, no tops. It took one company to set the standard. Once that was accomplished, the industry moved forward and those

companies with inferior products left the marketplace. Similarly, the highperformance computing industry saw a variety of architectures and more

than a dozen companies competing for a small client base. Some vendors

manned flight to the moon touched down in

the Sea of Tranquility. “That’s one small step

for man, one giant leap for mankind.” – Neil

A. Armstrong

Evelyn (SGI Origin 2000)

Evelyn Boyd Granville (1924–) was one of the

first African-American women to earn a doctorate in Mathematics. In the early 1960s, she developed computer programs that were used for

trajectory analysis in the Mercury Project (the

first U.S. manned space mission), as well as the

Apollo Project (to explore the Moon).

Fred (VAX 11/780)

Frederick J. “Fred” Noonan (1893–1937) was

one of the most outstanding navigators of his

time, and in the mid-1930s certainly one of

the most experienced aerial navigators. He

charted the courses for Pan Am exploratory

flights across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii,

Midway Island, Wake, Guam, the Philippines,

and Hong Kong. Noonan served as navigator

on Amelia Earhart’s 1937 around-the-world

flight. Both disappeared between Lae, New

Guinea, and Howland Island. 

Fermi (SGI Origin 2000)

Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) was the first physicist to split the atom, and his research was instrumental in the development of nuclear power

generation. Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize

in 1938 for his nuclear research. (Fermi is a set

of CPUs within Turing.)

Gamma (Intel iPSC/860)

The third letter of the Greek alphabet, as well

as a unit of magnetic field intensity (10-5).

Gatun (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

Gatun was named after a lock in the Panama

Canal. Gatun stores all the input observations

(about 400,000 per day) and the DAO operational output data products (about 3.5 gigabytes per day with GEOS DAS v3.0).

Gottfried (VAX 6320)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716)

invented differential and integral calculus

simultaneously with Newton. 

Continued on page 8A

www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 5A

Continued from page 4A

Continued on page 8A

The evolution of high-performance computers at NAS has increased the fidelity of computational fluid dynamics modeling as evidenced by the 1993 particle tracing of two blade revolutions of a tilt-rotor aircraft (opposite page) to the

particle traces around a large-scale unsteady moving body. (Opposite page:

Robert Meakin and David Kao. Above: M. Jahed Djomehri)
1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Serial Vector

Parallel

NASA Advanced supercomputing (NAS) Division Comp

1988 • Reynolds

Cray Y-MP

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 317.46 p

1990 • Gamma

Intel iPSC/860 P

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 60 PS/processor: 60 S

Peak

1

Peak M

1

Peak M

1987 • Scott/Chuck ott/Ch k

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 240 /

1987 • Pierre

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 14 /

1984 • Cray X-MP r

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 210.53 pr

1986 • (Stokes pictured)

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 487.8
1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

Distributed Shared Memory/Distributed Computing

www.nas.nasa.gov uter Timeline www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints

1994 • Babbage

IBM SP-2

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 266 S

1997 • Turing

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 390

•

SGI Orgin 3800/400 Mhz 8

Peak MFLO Peak MFLOPS/processor: 800 PS/processor: 800 /

1996 • Newton

Cray J90

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 200 /

1999• Lomax

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 800 MFLO /

2001 • Bright

Peak MFLOPS/processor: 2,000 k MFLOPS p

1993 • Sigma

k MFLOPS/processor: 75 S

993 Boltzmann

MFLOPS/processor: 128

993 • Von Neumann

Cray C90

MFLOPS/processor: 960 p
consolidated with other, larger companies, while many simply disappeared.

The majority of these computers were better at contrasting datasets (cryptographic computing for the intelligence community, for example) while others, notably the Crays, were superior at processing large blocks of arithmetic

(as used in the NAS Division’s computational physics). However, these experimental machines did provide a powerful platform for developing new

machine architectures to advance the state-of-the-art in high-performance computing and to push for architectures that could compute at Teraflop speed. 

NAS researchers used the pool of experimental machines to develop the

Portable Batch System (PBS). Developed collaboratively with computer scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the software was introduced on March 1, 1994, to synchronize job scheduling and to run batch

jobs from workstations. PBS was eventually transferred to the commercial

firm MRJ/Veridian, which now distributes the software. 

1,024 and Beyond

In May 1996, then NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin tasked Ames

Research Center with becoming the agency’s Center of Excellence for

Information Technology. Ames took the lead in fostering research and development relationships with the most promising high-performance computer

vendors. Out of these pathfinding relationships (with vendors including

Cray, Intel, IBM, SGI, and Thinking Machines), SGI’s Origin 2000 was the

only system able to sustain a level of performance on 3-D Navier-Stokes

CFD problems exceeding the sustained performance of the 16-processor

Cray C-90. SGI’s new offering featured a non-uniform memory access

(NUMA, later ccNUMA – for cache-coherent NUMA) multiprocessor that

would eventually scale to more than 1,000 processors with minimal performance (bandwidth or latency) penalties. 

NAS researchers were excited about the scientific possibilities the Origin

computers offered, and within four months a 64-CPU Origin 2000 system,

Hopper, was delivered and installed. Hopper was used to develop technologies

8A Gridpoints

Helios1 and Helios2 (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

The Sun god, son of Hyperion: later identified

with Apollo.

Hopper (SGI Origin 2000)

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (1906–

1992) was a mathematician and pioneer in

data processing. The admiral made several vital

contributions to the development of modern

computing systems in the early 1960s, including helping to invent the Cobol programming

language as well as the first practical compiler

for modern computers.

Jimpf0 and Jimpf1 (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

Jim Pfaendtner, a noted computer scientist at

Goddard Space Flight Center, is currently chief

of the Production Management Branch of the

National Meteorological Center and is responsible for the computer activities associated with

daily weather forecasting for the nation.

Kalnay (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

Eugenia Kalnay is the chair of the Meteorological Department at the University of

Maryland and was director of the Environmental Modeling Center for the National Centers

for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), National Weather Service.

Lagrange (Intel 386)

Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) was an

18th century mathematician most famous for

his theory that expresses a dynamic system

through the function of coordinates, velocities,

and times.

Lomax (SGI Origin 2800)

Harvard Lomax (1922–1999) was a scientist

and manager at NASA Ames Research Center

for more than 50 years. He was instrumental in

leading the transition from theoretical aerodynamics to computational aerodynamics, and

personally performed pioneering research in

theoretical aerodynamics, numerical algorithm

development, parallel computing, computational turbulence, and turbulence modeling.

Lou (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

Louis Lopez (1938–1999) was a scientist in the

NAS Division. He began his professional

career with IBM at their Scientific Center in

Houston, where he studied computer simula- Continued on page 9A

Continued from page 5A

NASA computational fluid dynamics researchers applied Space Shuttle rocket

fuel pump technology to the DeBakey Heart Assist Device. Compare the original ventricular assist device (top) to the unit after modifications by NAS

researchers (bottom). NAS Division researchers added an inducer to the

DeBakey device, which eliminated the dangerous backflow of blood by increasing pressure and making the flow more continuous. The device is subject to the

highest pressure around the blade tips, shown in magenta. NASA recently

named the DeBakey Heart Assist Device as its Invention of the Year for 2001.

(NASA/Cetin Kiris)

Continued from page 5A
for the future 256-processor Origin computer. When the CFD code

ARC3D was ported to this machine, it demonstrated a sustained speed of

20 gigaflops – a five time improvement over the 16-processor Cray C90 von

Neumann. (Many of the Origin systems that reside in the NAS Facility were

jointly acquired by NASA’s Data Assimilation Office [DAO], the Consolidated Supercomputing Management Office [CoSMO] and Ames

Research Center’s Information Technology Program.) In addition to the

NUMA/ccNUMA architecture, these computers offered increased computing power at a lower acquisition cost. The Origins set the stage for the NAS

Division’s foray into scientific areas outside of aeronautics, while at the same

time capturing the essence of Administrator Goldin’s vision. 

As government had driven the development of computers in previous

decades, NAS computer scientists collaborated with SGI to build a 256-

processor machine incorporating single system image (SSI) technology,

which uses a single operating system to control all the processors attached to

a globally shared memory as well as the input/output system. The success of

the 256-processor SSI Origin 2000, Steger, enabled NASA to fund an

advanced 512-processor Origin. SGI and NAS worked together to minimize the technical risk in developing a 512-processor Origin 2800,

known as Lomax. After the success of the high-processor Origins at NAS,

SGI was able to spin off the machine designs and found a commercial market for both the 256 and later 512 systems.

The performance improvement of NAS’s computational codes on the 512-

processor Origin 2800 attracted the attention of NASA as well as the scientific and computer development communities. NAS researchers and SGI

computer scientists believed that pairing two newer technology 512-processor machines could increase performance by a factor of three. 

On August 23, 2000, NAS and SGI jointly announced plans to build the

first 1,024 processor supercomputer using the SSI architecture. Named

Chapman, the computer began operations in August 2001. “The previous

512-processor Origin 2800 showed that CFD and climate modeling codes

scaled linearly, and that a 1,024-processor Origin 3800 would likely do the

www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 9A

tions of blood flow. Later, he began working

on supercomputer performance analysis tools,

first at IBM’s Palo Alto Scientific Center and

then at Ames. His efforts on improving parallel program performance resulted in the NAS

Trace Visualizer (NTV), a tool that helps

users understand what happens during a program’s execution.

Navier (Cray 2)

Claude Louis Marie Henri Navier (1785–

1836) was a French professor of applied mechanics at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées beginning in 1830. Navier is remembered for the

Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics for

incompressible fluids and viscous fluids.

Newton (Cray J90)

Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727), an English

mathematician and physicist, was considered

one of the greatest scientists in history. Newton

was one of the inventors of the branch of

mathematics known as Calculus. Newton

solved the mysteries of light and optics, formulated the three laws of motion, and derived

from them the law of universal gravitation.

Orville (VAX 11/780)

Orville Wright (1871–1948) and his brother

Wilbur flew the first powered aircraft in

December 1903. The plane was built in

Dayton, Ohio, and shipped to Kitty Hawk on

the North Carolina coast for its first flight.

Pierre (Thinking Machines CM-2)

Pierre-Simon LaPlace (1749 – 1827) was a mathematician and physicist who proved the stability of celestial bodies through differential

equations.

Piglet (SGI Origin 2000)

Named for the fictional character in A.A.

Milne’s Winnie The Pooh.

Poncho (1901–1975)

Florence L. “Poncho” Barnes was an aviatrix

and proprietor of the Rancho Oro Verde FlyInn Dude Ranch on the outskirts of what is

now Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Poncho was friend and confidant to America’s

pioneering aviators including Charles “Chuck”

Yeager and James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle.

Continued on page 10A

Continued from page 8A

NASA’s Information Power Grid (IPG) enables researchers to use computers

in both a parallel and distributed fashion. The IPG can manage underutilized resources, decrease computational turnaround time, support a collaborative problem-solving environment, and provide more cost-effective computing

solutions. In this example, researchers solved a complex 14-million-point aerospace geometry calculation (high-lift subsonic wind tunnel data) using three

remotely located computers at Ames, Glenn, and Langley Research Centers.
Prandtl (Amdahl 5880 – NAStore)

Ludwig Prandtl (1875–1953), mathematician

and professor of applied mechanics at the

University of Gottingen (Germany) where he

founded the school of aerodynamics. Prandtl

discovered the boundary layer of friction and

drag over a wing in 1904.

Reynolds (Cray Y-MP)

Osborne Reynolds (1842–1912) was the first

Professor of Engineering at the University of

Manchester, England, who produced many of

the modern theories of turbulent flow,

hydraulic modeling, hydrodynamic lubrication, friction, and heat transfer. Known for

the “Reynolds Number” used in fluid dynamics calculations.

Scott (Convex 3820)

Scott Crossfield was the first person to reach

Mach 2.005 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.,

in 1953 piloting a Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket. Crossfield flew every aircraft in the

nation’s inventory. He flew the X-15, an aircraft he helped design, and was the first to fly

the X-15 in a glide flight and a powered flight.

Sigma (Intel Paragon)

Sigma is the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet.

Siméon (Sun 4/490)

Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840) developed

the theories of electrostatics and magnetism.

Simak (Sun Enterprise 10000)

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988), was born in

Minneapolis, Minn., and attended the

University of Wisconsin. Simak worked with

various newspapers in the Midwest from the

early 1930s to 1961. He is considered one of

the elders of science fiction writing. Often

described as a “pastoralist” for presenting America’s small-town viewpoint. His focus was on human philosophy, the countryside, and people.

Steger (SGI Origin 2000)

Joseph Steger (1943–1992) began his career as

a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, and

later became a professor at Stanford University

and the University of California at Davis. He

pioneered computational technology, both

Continued on page 11A

Continued from page 9A same,” says NAS Senior Scientist Jim Taft. “We demonstrated that this was

true within a matter of weeks. The OVERFLOW code, used in CFD, scaled

from 60 gigaflops on the 512 to 165 gigaflops on the 1,024, while the

climate modeling code (FVCCM3-MLP) scaled from 900 days a day to

more than 2,900.”

Simultaneous to the development of the Origin high-performance computers, NASA began building a network of high-performance computers, data

storage archives, and scientific instruments that allows remotely located users

access to high-performance computing resources. Known as the Information

Power Grid (IPG), its development is being directed by researchers at NAS

in collaboration with scientists at Glenn and Langley Research Centers, as

well as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “The IPG is becoming the

model by which NASA accesses its high-performance computing resources,”

says IPG Project Manager William E. Johnston. “We felt we had an opportunity to fundamentally change the way computing is done – and the IPG

accomplishes that.” The addition of the 1,024-processor machine further

increases the power of the nodes on the IPG. “One of NASA’s great strengths

is to carry research tasks through to working systems,” says Bill Feiereisen,

former NAS division chief. “This has been the IPG team’s focus for the last

three years – to put in place an infrastructure to provide researchers and engineers the computing power to advance science. A working grid now exists

that includes high-performance systems at three NASA research centers. In

addition, we are about to link IPG with the grids that our colleagues are

building at the National Science Foundation/Partnerships for Advanced

Computational Infrastructure centers.”

“The future of high-performance computing will see faster, higher processor

count supercomputers serving researchers located hundreds or thousands of

miles from where the machines are located,” says NAS Division Chief John

Ziebarth. “Our future lies in delivering more computing cycles to the scientific community to enable NASA to meet its mission goals.” 

—Nicholas A. Veronico

10A Gridpoints

NAS Logo Displays Division Mission

NUMERICAL AERODYNAMIC SIMULATION

The NAS Division’s logo, as well as its name, has evolved over the years to

reflect the division’s diverse areas of research. The original logo, 1986, above

left, presents the division’s focus on computational aerodynamics. At that time

the division was known as the Numerical Aerodynamics Simulation Systems

Division. A decade later, the logo changed to showcase not only the division’s

aerodynamics research, but the great strides in turbulence modeling and scientific visualization. In the interim, the name was changed to the Numerical

Aerospace Systems Division. The current logo, far right, introduced in 1992,

was designed by division employee John Hardman. It illustrates the movement

of an aerospace vehicle through a computational grid. The grid represents the

NAS Division’s work in aero-, nano- and bio-technology, computational chemistry, turbulence modeling, computational visualization, and grid computing.

In 2001, the division’s name was changed to the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division.
www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 11A

theory and application, that revolutionized the

use of high-speed digital computers to solve complex problems in aerospace sciences.

Stokes (Cray 2)

Sir George Stokes (1819–1903), Irish-born physicist and mathematician, was a pioneer researcher

of the motion of incompressible fluids and the

friction of fluids in motion.

Sunrise (DAO – SGI Origin 2000)

Data Assimilation Office (DAO) cluster used to

produce research-quality assimilated global

datasets for advancing the understanding of the

Earth’s system and climate change.

Turing (SGI Origin 2000)

Alan Turing (1912–1954) was one of the great

pioneers in the computer field. As a mathematician, he applied the concept of the algorithm to

digital computers. His research between computers and nature created the field of artificial intelligence. During World War II, code-breaking work

under Turing’s supervision was very successful

thanks to the use of machines that later developed

into the first computers.

von Neumann (Cray C-90)

John von Neumann (1908–1957) was a brilliant

mathematician whose contributions include the

bit as a measurement of computer memory; the

theory of cellular automata; the serial execution of

instructions; and the stored-program concept of

computing, a part of virtually every modern computer. “If people do not believe that mathematics

is simple, it is only because they do not realize

how complicated life is.” – von Neumann

Whitney (Intel Pentium Pro)

Eli Whitney (1765–1825) was a pioneer mechanical engineer and manufacturer. Whitney is best

remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin. He

also affected the industrial development of the

United States when, in manufacturing muskets

for the government, he translated the concept of

interchangeable parts, or “commodity” components, into a manufacturing system, giving birth

to the American mass-production concept.

Wilbur (VAX 11/780)

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) was co-inventor of

the first heavier-than-air powered airplane, which

flew at 10:35 a.m., on Dec. 17, 1903.

Continued from page 10A

The NAS Division was conceived under the following management structure, and is now a component of the Information

Systems Directorate. Management members listed under the Ames

center director, director of research support, Thermo and Gas Dynamics Division, and Aerophysics Directorate were instrumental

in seeing the vision of NAS Division to fruition.

NASA Ames Center Directors

Hans Mark (1969–1977) • Clarence Syvertson (1977–1984)

William Ballhaus (1984–1989) • Dale Compton (1989–1994)

Ken K. Munechika (1994–1996)

Henry McDonald (1996 to present)

Director of Research Support

Loren Bright (1969–1979) • Bob Eddy

Thermo and Gas Dynamics Division

Victor Peterson

Aerophysics Directorate

Dean Chapman • William Ballhaus

Victor Peterson • F. Ron Bailey

Information Systems Directorate 

David Cooper July 1994 – April 1997

Henry Lum (Deputy) Sept. 1994 – April 1997

Steven Zornetzer April 1997 – present

Paul Kutler (Deputy) April 1997 – Jan. 2001

NAS Division Chiefs

F. Ron Bailey Feb. 1983 – July 1990

Ron Deiss (acting) July 1990 – Feb. 1991

David Cooper (acting) March 1991 – Aug. 1991

David Cooper Aug. 1991 – June 1994

Walter Brooks (div. mgr.) May 1995 – Nov. 1996

Marisa Chancellor (acting) Dec. 1996 – Aug. 1997

Paul Kutler (acting) Aug. 1997 – June 1998

William J. Feiereisen July 1998 – March 2002

John Ziebarth (acting) March 2002 – present

NAS Deputy Division Chiefs

Marcie Smith 1983 – 1985

Ron Deiss 1987 – March 1993

Marisa Chancellor April 1993 – Aug. 1997

Tom Woodrow (acting) July 1994 – Oct. 1994

Eric A. Hibbard (acting) Oct. 1994 – Jan. 1997

Tom Lasinski (acting) Jan. 1997 – Sept. 1999

John P. Ziebarth Sept. 1999 – March 2002

Center, Directorate and

NAS Division Management
Peak Theoretical Peak

Machine Type of MFLOPS Number Speed Machine

Name Machine per processor of CPUs GFLOP/second Main Memory Installed

----- Cray XMP-12 210.53 1 0.21 2 Mwords 08/01/84

Navier Cray 2 487.80 4 1.95 256 Mwords 09/30/85

Navier* Cray 2 487.80 4 1.95 256 Mwords 00/00/87

Chuck/Scott Convex 3820 240 8 1.90 4 GB 00/00/87

Pierre Thinking Machines CM2 14 1,024 14.34 4 GB 03/00/87

Stokes Cray 2 487.80 4 1.95 256 Mwords 01/00/88

Piper CDC/ETA-10Q 210.5 4 0.84 64 Mwords 04/00/88

Reynolds Cray Y-MP 317.46 8 2.54 32 Mwords 08/30/88

Pierre* Thinking Machines CM2 14 1,024 14.34 4 GB 01/00/89

LaGrange Intel iPSC/860 60 128 7.68 4 GB 01/00/90

Reynolds* Cray Y-MP 333.33 8 2.67 128 Mwords 02/00/90

Pierre* Thinking Machines CM2 14 1,024 14.34 4 GB 02/00/91

Reynolds* Cray Y-MP 333.33 8 2.67 256 Mwords 12/00/91

Boltzmann Thinking Machines CM5 128 128 16.38 32 MB per proc. 01/00/93

Sigma Intel Paragon 75 208 15.60 16 MB per proc. 02/00/93

von Neumann Cray C90 960 16 15.36 256 Mwords 03/00/93

Eagle Cray C90 960 8 7.68 256 Mwords 05/00/93

von Neumann* Cray C90 960 16 15.36 1,024 Mwords 09/00/93

Babbage IBM SP-2 266 128 17.02 2 GB 07/00/94

da Vinci SGI Power Challenge ----- 16 workstations ----- 512 MB 09/00/94

Babbage* IBM SP-2 266 160 42.56 256 GB 10/00/94

da Vinci* SGI Power Challenge XL 360 32 11.52 512 MB 08/00/95

Newton Cray J90 200 36 7.20 4 GB 02/00/96

Piglet SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 8 4.00 2.048 GB 03/17/97

Turing SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 24 9.36 7.168 GB 03/28/97

Fermi SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 8 3.12 1.024 GB 03/28/97

Hopper SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 64 32.00 16.38 GB 12/31/97

Evelyn SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 8 4.00 2.048 GB 12/31/97

Steger SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 256 128.00 65.536 GB 03/27/98

Lomax SGI Origin 2800/300 MHz 600 512 307.20 128 GB 07/01/99

Lou SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 390 12 4.68 8 GB 07/01/99

Ariel SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 8 4.00 4 GB 05/01/00

Sebastian SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 8 4.00 4 GB 05/01/00

Lomax* SGI Origin 2800/400 MHz 800 512 409.60 192 GB 07/17/00

Lomax II SGI Origin 3800/400 MHz 800 512 409.60 192 GB 04/00/02

SN1 - 512 SGI Origin 3000/400 MHz 800 512 409.60 128 GB 03/00/01

Bright Cray SV1e/500 MHz 2000 32 64.00 32 GB 05/25/01

Chapman SGI Origin 3800/400 MHz 800 1,024 819.20 256 GB 11/01/01

Chapman II* SGI Origin 3800/600 MHz 1200 1,024 1228.80 256 GB 04/01/02

Data Assimilation Office

Jimpf0 SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 64 24.96 16.38 GB 06/26/97

Jimpf1 SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 64 24.96 16.38 GB 06/26/97

Helios1 SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 8 3.12 2.048 GB 03/28/97

Helios2 SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 8 3.12 2.048 GB 03/28/97

T1 SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 8 3.12 2.048 GB 03/28/97

T2 SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 4 1.56 2.048 GB 06/29/98

T3 SGI Origin 2000/180 MHz 260 4 1.04 1.024 GB 06/24/97

T4 SGI Origin 2000/180 MHz 260 4 1.04 1.024 GB 06/24/97

Lou SGI Origin 2000/195 MHz 390 8 3.12 3.072 GB 03/28/97

Gatun SGI Origin 2000/250MHz 500 4 2.00 1.024 GB 06/25/98

This SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 2 1.00 256 MB 05/21/98

That SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 2 1.00 256 MB 05/21/98

Kalnay SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 64 32.00 16.38 GB 06/15/98

Dixon0 SGI Origin 2000/250 MHz 500 64 32.00 16.38 GB 06/15/98

Sunrise SGI Origin 2000/300 MHz 600 64 38.40 32.768 GB 04/01/99

BJ SGI Origin 2000/300 MHz 600 16 9.60 8.192 GB 03/20/00

* upgrades

Selected NAS Supercomputer Specifications
www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 5

“Our goal is to make LaunchPad modular and customizable

so that researchers can build their own application-specific

portal from it,” says Myers. Each new resource in the grid

environment adds a layer of complexity, and no matter what,

security must always be addressed. While the web increases

accessibility, it has the potential to make LaunchPad insecure.

File Transfers You Can Trust

To ensure secure transmission of information, the web portal

team established several requirements for logging into

LaunchPad via a web browser. First, users must store their

proxy certificate (an encrypted block of information about a

user for authentication purposes) on a secure server (see

Gridpoints Summer 2001, “Public Key Infrastructure: Get a

Passport to Grid Country”). All certificates must be issued by

an acceptable certificate authority (authorized people and

software that sign certificates for authentication purposes),

and researchers must have a valid user identification and a

distinguished name (a unique combination of information

that identifies an individual). User names must also be recognizable to the grid’s database. In the near future, the team

plans to expand on certificate options, alerting users when

their certificate is about to expire, and giving users the option

of selecting longer session times.

LaunchPad enables secure file transfer from any web browser, as long as the user is able to log in. The LaunchPad development team is now exploring options, such as the integration of web services to allow the maintenance of a consistent

user interface, regardless of what is going on behind the

scenes, and regardless of what changes in technology have

taken place. “With web services, you could just execute a

script that would access and move the files you needed,

instead of having to move them directly,” explains Myers.

Web services is a new concept to the IPG community this

year, and will be examined more extensively over the next

nine months. 

The next step for expanding the capabilities of LaunchPad is

to focus on the development of application-specific portals.

“If we can accomplish this, we will create an interface that is

flexible enough to allow users to fully customize their view of

LaunchPad,” explains Myers. Once IPG LaunchPad permits

researchers to access all resources on the grid, they will be

able to accomplish anything they can currently do – all from

the convenience of a web browser.

— Holly A. Amundson

Continued from page 4

LaunchPad’s login screen can be accessed from any web browser, anywhere in the world. As long as users have a valid username and password, they have the freedom to launch jobs to any IPG resource. LaunchPad enables users to: submit jobs to

“batch” compute engines, transfer files, view status on systems and jobs, execute commands on compute resources, and modify

their user environment.

For more information, visit the following websites:

NASA’s Information Power Grid, visit: 

http://www.ipg.nasa.gov

Grid Portal Development Kit:

http://dast.nlanr.net/Features/GridPortal
6 Gridpoints

Astronomers study the sky night after night, searching

for answers to questions about how life began on

Earth and where it originated. Countless observations of organic molecules have been made by studying the

interstellar medium. How will astronomers make sense of

these observations? How can they trace their findings back to

the beginnings of terrestrial life? Computational chemists

Galina Chaban, Winifred Huo, and David Schwenke from

the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division plan

to compile a database to help astronomers identify the molecules they observe in space, and to reach accurate conclusions about their findings. Currently, little precise data on

amino acids are available to the scientific community.

“Amino acids are fundamental building blocks of life. When

astronomers try to find out if extraterrestrial life exists and

how it is formed, a telltale sign will be the spectral signature

of amino acids,” explains Huo. “Amino acids and small peptides (strings of amino acids) have, in the past, been identified in meteorites, making the search for them in planetary

environments especially relevant,” adds Chaban.

Since the Murchison meteorite crashed near

Murchison, Australia in September 1969, scientists

have identified within its composition, 92 different

amino acids, including 19 of the 20 amino acids

found in terrestrial biological systems. Discoveries

such as this provide a strong lead to solving the mystery of life’s origin.

Breaking New Ground

To generate data for this catalog of amino acids, Chaban and

her team will develop a theoretical model for infrared (IR)

spectroscopy using both quantum mechanics and molecular

mechanics, also known as force field calculations. This computational model will be continuously improved upon by

comparing its result with experimental data. The experimental data are obtained using gas phase spectroscopy, which

provides highly detailed output.

The team’s work on IR spectroscopy was awarded monetary

support through the NASA Ames Research Center Director’s

Discretionary Fund in summer 2001. For the duration of

their funding period (through summer 2003), they plan to

develop a theoretical model, and test it using accurate experimental results for small amino acids. Once the computational model can correctly produce data for small amino

acids, it will be modified to accommodate larger amino acids.

Research focus is on the vibrational spectra of amino acids

and purines with high-intensity infrared radiation (in the

Identifying Organic Molecules:

The Link to Our Beginnings

Computational chemists in the NAS Division are developing a theoretical model to

generate accurate data of amino acids, which will help astronomers identify molecules

observed in the interstellar medium. 

The Murchison Meteorite crashed to Earth on

September 28, 1969, near Murchison, Australia. The

meteorite contains minerals, water, and complex

organic molecules such as amino acids. 
www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 7

region of 1,700 wave numbers, or cm-1). These amino acids

and peptides are of particular interest to astronomers

because their presence in space would mean that important

stages of prebiotic chemistry can take place in harsh

interstellar conditions.

Traditionally, when studying amino acids through vibrational infrared spectroscopy (an important tool for identifying molecules), scientists use the molecular mechanics (MM)

approach, which enables them to tackle large molecules

(hundreds and thousands of atoms). With this method, however, accuracy is compromised. “The molecular mechanics

method is like trying to study balls on a spring,” explains

Chaban. The quantum mechanics (QM) approach, on the

other hand, is quite accurate, but only very small molecules

(up to about 10 to 15 atoms) can be examined at one time.

Since nearly all amino acids present in biological systems are

rather large – 10 to 27 atoms (not to mention peptides,

which are even larger than amino acids), a different approach

must be taken – one that will provide both sound results, and

have the ability to accommodate larger molecular systems. 

Chaban, Schwenke, and Huo propose a unique vibrational

IR method for studying amino acids, which combines both

QM and MM (see figure of hybrid approach, above). “It’s

really complicated to combine two methods (MM and QM),

but that’s the only way to get accurate results with large molecules like amino acids and small peptides,” says Chaban.

This combined approach using hybrid potentials will enable

the study of larger biological molecules (20-30 atoms), while

also reducing the margin of error from 200-300 cm-1, to 30-

50 cm-1. “The key part of the molecular system which has

unusual interactions and requires more accurate treatment will be treated at a higher level (ab initio, or QM),

while other parts of the molecule containing more standard

chemical bonds will be treated with empirical (MM) potentials,” explains Chaban.

The group is currently comparing the smallest amino acid,

glycine (10 atoms), and a 13-atom glycine-water complex

(see figures of glycine and glycine-water, page 8) using full ab

initio (QM) calculations with the hybrid (QM/MM) technique. Their results have already increased in accuracy by one

order of magnitude (an error of only 30-50 cm-1). The team

is aiming to increase the accuracy another order of magnitude – between one and three wave numbers. “The main

challenge we are working on now is to develop a better treatment of the borderline regions of the molecule between the

QM and MM regions,” explains Chaban.

The Experimental Side

Not only is it very difficult to obtain precise computational

results for large molecules, but it is also extremely difficult to

generate accurate experimental data. “Lack of experimental

infrared data is due to the fact that such molecules are thermally unstable,” explains Chaban. To sidestep the problem of

thermal instability, Chaban proposes to collaborate with

experimentalist Mattanjah De Vries, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who uses a laser desorption technique to bring molecules into the gas phase

without undergoing decomposition.

C

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Schematic illustration of the concept of the hybrid (Quantum Mechanics/ Molecular Mechanics or QM/MM) computational

approach. Hydrogen bonds are not properly described by commonly used empirical force fields and need more accurate quantummechanical treatment. Thus, the region that includes hydrogen bonds is treated with ab initio (quantum mechanics), and the rest

of the molecule (that contains standard chemical bonds) is treated by computationally less-demanding molecular mechanics potentials. The biggest challenge of this approach is proper treatment of borderline regions and cross-interactions between QM and MM atoms.
8 Gridpoints

The theoretical model will be fine-tuned using experimental

results as a control. Once the computations are comparable

to experimental data, the model will be applied to a large

group of molecules relevant to the study of the origin of life.

The vibrational spectra of these biological molecules will

then be used to build a database to aid astronomers. Initially,

the database will hold information on 20 different amino

acids – later, it will be expanded to hold records on approximately 90 amino acids and simple peptides. 

Since the problems Chaban and her team are solving contain

computations of thousands of energy points, parallelizing the

code will enable faster execution of these calculations. A molecule with only 15 atoms, for example, involves calculations

of tens of thousands of energy points. The team is currently

using two computational chemistry software packages to

run code on the 512-processor SGI Origin 2800 supercomputer, Lomax. The GAMESS electronic structure software

package is used for ab initio calculations, and the TINKER

molecular modeling package is used for molecular mechanics calculations. 

“Mapping these compounds in space is of fundamental

importance to understanding the origins, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe, as it can provide critical

information for constructing models of chemical evolution

under different astronomical conditions,” says Chaban.

Providing astronomers with a repository of data on amino

acids will help to quickly identify molecules in the night sky,

and begin tracing their chemical evolution – to the beginning of life on Earth. 

— Holly A. Amundson

Geometrical structure of the lowest energy

conformer of the glycine-water complex

obtained at the ab initio level of theory.

The structure obtained using the hybrid

QM/MM technique is very similar to the

purely ab initio one. The intermolecular

hydrogen bonding interactions between

glycine and water are found to be very

strong and to affect vibrational frequencies

and infrared intensities of both the glycine

and the water molecule in the complex to

a very large extent. The computed vibrational spectra of complexes of amino acids

and small peptides with water will allow

scientists to guide experimental observations of these biological building blocks on

icy surfaces of interstellar grains.

Geometrical structure of the smallest amino acid, glycine, obtained using ab initio approach. Bond lengths are given in angstroms,

bond angles in degrees. The structure corresponds to the lowest energy conformer of glycine. The spectroscopic predictions for glycine

from the ab initio potential are in very good agreement with experimental results obtained in rare-gas matrix environments. This theory agrees even more closely with spectroscopic data for glycine in hydrogen droplets, where environmentl effects are much weaker. 

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Calendar of

Events

IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems

Adelphi, Maryland • April 15–18

The 19th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage will be held in

cooperation with the 10th NASA Goddard Conference on

Mass Storage Systems and Technologies at the Inn and

Conference Center at the University of Maryland to provide

a forum for discussion of issues relevant to the management

of large volumes of data. For more information visit

http://storageconference.org/2002

International Parallel and Distributed

Processing Symposium

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida • April 15–19

The International Parallel and Distributed Processing

Symposium is designed for scientists and engineers from

around the world to present their research and discoveries in

all aspects of parallel computation. The symposium will

include technical sessions, workshops, tutorials, and commercial exhibits. For conference information, visit:

www.ipdps.org

Grid Computing Planet 2002 Conference 

San Jose, California • June 17–18

The Grid Computing Planet 2002 Conference and Expo will

bring together grid technology researchers, developers, vendors and users to learn, exchange ideas and hear grid computing success stories. The event will feature an interactive

exhibit floor enabling grid technology vendors to showcase

their products. The conference emphasizes topics that will

help attendees determine how grid technology can be utilized, what type of grid application will work best for them,

and what tools are available to get started. Sessions will cover

grid computing basics; related technologies such as distributed computing, P2P, clusters and caching; major grid initiatives; grid tools; grid security; grid computing and medical

research; grid standards, policy requirements and implications; and grid case studies. More information is available at:

www.intmediaevents.com/grid/spring02/

Siggraph 2002

San Antonio, Texas • July 21–26

The 29th International Conference of Computer Graphics

and Interactive Techniques is a forum for computer graphics

scientists, artists, engineers, and educators. Technical presentations will include papers, panels, courses, applications, an

educators program, web graphics program, and an applications lab. Conference information can be viewed at:

www.siggraph.org/s2002

The Grace Hopper Celebration of 

Women in Computing 2002

Vancouver, B.C., Canada • October 9–12

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

2002 is the fourth in a series of conferences designed to

bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women

in today's technology fields. Visit www.gracehopper.org.

SC2002

Baltimore, Maryland • November 16–22

“From Terabytes to Insights” is the theme for this year’s

supercomputing conference. SC2002 will bring together scientists, engineers, designers, and managers from all areas of

high-performance networking and computing, showcasing

the latest in systems, applications, and services. April 26 is

the submission deadline for: Gordon Bell Awards nominations; panel participation; technical papers (extended

abstracts); tutorials; and workshops. The conference website

is: www.sc-2002.org

www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints Gridpoints 9

Visualization of the entire fuel supply system of a liquid rocket

engine, including high-fidelity unsteady turbopump flow

analysis. The objective of this research is to provide a computational framework for design and analysis of the entire fuel supply system of a liquid rocket engine. This capability is needed to

support the design of pump subsystems for advanced space

transportation vehicles that are likely to involve liquid propulsion systems. (dataset by Cetin Kiris, visualization by David

Ellsworth and Timothy A. Sandstrom)
FIRST CLASS MAIL

POSTAGE & FEES PAID

NASA

Permit No. G-27

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division

Ames Research Center

MS IN258-6

Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000

Official Business

Penalty for Private Use $300

Address Correction

If the above address or mail stop is incorrect, please e-mail a current 

address to gridpoints@nas.nasa.gov, or write to:

Gridpoints Editor, MS 258-6, Moffett Field, CA 94035

PLEASE RECYCLE

Printed on recycled and recyclable paper with vegetable-based inks

Identifying Organic Molecules: The Link

to Our Beginnings

Computational chemists in the NAS Division are developing

a theoretical model to generate accurate data of amino acids,

which will help astronomers identify molecules observed in

the interstellar medium. See page 6.

Launching Jobs Into Grid Space

Information Power Grid users can now send jobs to any IPG

resource through the recently developed grid portal, LaunchPad.

See page 4.

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www.nas.nasa.gov/gridpoints

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