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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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NASA NTRS2003

Image Processor Electronics (IPE): The High-Performance Computing System for NASA SWIFT Mission

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are believed to be the most powerful explosions that have occurred in the Universe since the Big Bang and are a mystery to the scientific community. Swift, a NASA mission that includes international participation, was designed and built in preparation for a 2003 launch to help to determine the origin of Gamma Ray Bursts. Locating the position in the sky where a burst originates requires intensive computing, because the duration of a GRB can range between a few milliseconds up to approximately a minute. The instrument data system must constantly accept multiple images representing large regions of the sky that are generated by sixteen gamma ray detectors operating in parallel. It then must process the received images very quickly in order to determine the existence of possible gamma ray bursts and their locations. The high-performance instrument data computing system that accomplishes this is called the Image Processor Electronics (IPE). The IPE was designed, built and tested by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in order to meet these challenging requirements. The IPE is a small size, low power and high performing computing system for space applications. This paper addresses the system implementation and the system hardware architecture of the IPE. The paper concludes with the IPE system performance that was measured during end-to-end system testing.

Nguyen, Quang H.↗

NASA NTRS1991

High performance computing system for flight simulation at NASA Langley

The computer architecture and components used in the NASA Langley Advanced Real-Time Simulation System (ARTSS) are briefly described and illustrated with diagrams and graphs. Particular attention is given to the advanced Convex C220 processing units, the UNIX-based operating system, the software interface to the fiber-optic-linked Computer Automated Measurement and Control system, configuration-management and real-time supervisor software, ARTSS hardware modifications, and the current implementation status. Simulation applications considered include the Transport Systems Research Vehicle, the Differential Maneuvering Simulator, the General Aviation Simulator, and the Visual Motion Simulator.

Cleveland, Jeff I., II↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Signal and Power Integrity Design Methodology for High-Performance Flight Computing Systems

Computing capabilities of space systems have in-creased onboard performance by orders of magnitude with the use of radiation-tolerant field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA)and processors. The incorporation of signal and power integrity analysis with printed circuit board (PCB) design in reliable computing architectures for space systems has become critical to enable future mission capabilities. Developers launch high-performance processors into a breadth of orbits and missions, running varying applications that create challenges for designing reliable computing hardware. Specifically, for these designs, academic and industry research has focused on component radiation performance, fault mitigation, and reliable architectures. How-ever, other design parameters including electromagnetic interference (EMI), PCB stackup, signal integrity (SI), voltage regulator module (VRM) design, and power distribution network (PDN)are often deprioritized or disregarded as the design matures. Since these characteristics are becoming more significant in high-performance processor designs, this research presents a hardware design and analysis methodology for high-performance, space-computing systems that focuses on a holistic design approach and PDN reliability. While these challenges exist across all space hardware, the reduced PCB dimensions imposed by SmallSats and CubeSats introduce additional hurdles, specifically to VRM and decoupling design. By examining the relationship between the PDN and radiation performance, an analytical relationship is developed that incorporates Total Ionizing Dose and Single-Event Transients to ensure reliability throughout the mission duration. The presented design methodology is applied to the SpaceCube v3.0 Mini, an FPGA-based on-board science data processing system developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Advanced avionics↗

NASA NTRS1992

Integration of tools for the Design and Assessment of High-Performance, Highly Reliable Computing Systems (DAHPHRS), phase 1

Systems for Space Defense Initiative (SDI) space applications typically require both high performance and very high reliability. These requirements present the systems engineer evaluating such systems with the extremely difficult problem of conducting performance and reliability trade-offs over large design spaces. A controlled development process supported by appropriate automated tools must be used to assure that the system will meet design objectives. This report describes an investigation of methods, tools, and techniques necessary to support performance and reliability modeling for SDI systems development. Models of the JPL Hypercubes, the Encore Multimax, and the C.S. Draper Lab Fault-Tolerant Parallel Processor (FTPP) parallel-computing architectures using candidate SDI weapons-to-target assignment algorithms as workloads were built and analyzed as a means of identifying the necessary system models, how the models interact, and what experiments and analyses should be performed. As a result of this effort, weaknesses in the existing methods and tools were revealed and capabilities that will be required for both individual tools and an integrated toolset were identified.

Scheper, C.↗

NASA NTRS1992

High-performance computing for flight vehicles; Proceedings of the Symposium, Washington, Dec. 7-9, 1992

The present conference discusses high-performance computing systems for flight vehicles, large-scale simulations on high-performance flight computers and software, multidisciplinary and design/optimization applications of computers, computational electromagnetics and acoustics, the simulation of aircraft powerplant turbomachinery and reacting flows, and flow calculations on parallel machines. Also discussed are direct flow simulation Monte Carlo methods, structural mechanics sensitivity and fracture calculations on parallel machines, grid-generation and advanced algorithms for CFD, advanced solid-mechanics and structures applications, and advancements in flow visualization technology and neural networks.

Noor, Ahmed K.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessing and Advancing the Potential of Quantum Computing: A NASA Case Study

Quantum computing is one of the most enticing computational paradigms with the potential to revolutionize diverse areas of future-generation computational systems. While quantum computing hardware has advanced rapidly, from tiny laboratory experiments to quantum chips that can outperform even the largest supercomputers on specialized computational tasks, these noisy- intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) processors are still too small and non-robust to be directly useful for any real-world applications. In this paper, we describe NASA’s work in assessing and advancing the potential of quantum computing. We discuss advances in algorithms, both near- and longer-term, and the results of our explorations on current hardware as well as with simulations, including illustrating the benefits of algorithm-hardware codesign in the NISQ era. This work also includes physics-inspired classical algorithms that can be used at application scale today. We discuss innovative tools supporting the assessment and advancement of quantum computing, and describe improved methods for simulating quantum systems of various types on high performance computing systems that incorporate realistic error models. We provide an overview of recent methods for benchmarking, evaluating, and characterizing quantum hardware for error mitigation, computational purposes.

quantum computing↗

NASA NTRS1997

High Performance Input/Output Systems for High Performance Computing and Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation

The approach of this task was to apply leading parallel computing research to a number of existing techniques for assimilation, and extract parameters indicating where and how input/output limits computational performance. The following was used for detailed knowledge of the application problems: 1. Developing a parallel input/output system specifically for this application 2. Extracting the important input/output characteristics of data assimilation problems; and 3. Building these characteristics s parameters into our runtime library (Fortran D/High Performance Fortran) for parallel input/output support.

Fox, Geoffrey C.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Distributed Accounting on the Grid

By the late 1990s, the Internet was adequately equipped to move vast amounts of data between HPC (High Performance Computing) systems, and efforts were initiated to link together the national infrastructure of high performance computational and data storage resources together into a general computational utility 'grid', analogous to the national electrical power grid infrastructure. The purpose of the Computational grid is to provide dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to computational resources for the computing community in the form of a computing utility. This paper presents a fully distributed view of Grid usage accounting and a methodology for allocating Grid computational resources for use on a Grid computing system.

Thigpen, William↗

NASA NTRS1992

High performance flight simulation at NASA Langley

The use of real-time simulation at the NASA facility is reviewed specifically with regard to hardware, software, and the use of a fiberoptic-based digital simulation network. The network hardware includes supercomputers that support 32- and 64-bit scalar, vector, and parallel processing technologies. The software include drivers, real-time supervisors, and routines for site-configuration management and scheduling. Performance specifications include: (1) benchmark solution at 165 sec for a single CPU; (2) a transfer rate of 24 million bits/s; and (3) time-critical system responsiveness of less than 35 msec. Simulation applications include the Differential Maneuvering Simulator, Transport Systems Research Vehicle simulations, and the Visual Motion Simulator. NASA is shown to be in the final stages of developing a high-performance computing system for the real-time simulation of complex high-performance aircraft.

Cleveland, Jeff I., II↗

NASA NTRS1999

An Integrated Architecture for Onboard Spacecraft

As increasingly complex scientific and environmental observation spacecraft are deployed, the burden on the downlink assets, and ground-based systems complexity and cost is becoming a major problem. Already, the limitations of communications bandwidth and processing throughput limit the science data gathering, both in volume and in rate. This poses a dilemma to the scientist experimenter forcing choices between data collection and bandwidth/processing/archiving. Advances in ground based processing and space-to-Earth links have fallen behind the requirements for observation data, at increasing rates, over the last few decades. As NASA achieves its 40th anniversary, the ability to observe and capture phenomena of theoretical and practical interest to life on Earth far outstrips the ability to transfer, process, or store these data. NASA recognizes the need to invest on technological advancements that will enable both the space and ground systems to address the limitations. Spacecraft onboard computing power is a clear one. The capability of creating data products onboard the spacecraft adds a new level of flexibility to address the more demanding observation needs. Current spacecraft computing power is limited and incapable of addressing the needs of the new generation of observation satellites because extensive onboard data processing is required. Traditional spacecraft architectures only collect, package, and transmit to Earth the data acquired by multiple instruments. Conversely, the experience on developing ground data systems shows the need for high performance computing systems to process and create information from the instrumentation data. The expectation is that supercomputing technology is required to enable spacecraft to create information onboard. Moving supercomputing capability onboard spacecraft requires an approach that considers an integrated data architecture. Otherwise, it may simply convert a compute-bound problem into a communications bound problem, as has been shown numerous times in the context of massively parallel architectures. What is left to determine are the technologies that will enable spacecraft high performance computing.

Figueiredo, Marco A.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Next Generation Space Telescope Integrated Science Module Data System

The Data system for the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) Integrated Science Module (ISIM) is the primary data interface between the spacecraft, telescope, and science instrument systems. This poster includes block diagrams of the ISIM data system and its components derived during the pre-phase A Yardstick feasibility study. The poster details the hardware and software components used to acquire and process science data for the Yardstick instrument compliment, and depicts the baseline external interfaces to science instruments and other systems. This baseline data system is a fully redundant, high performance computing system. Each redundant computer contains three 150 MHz power PC processors. All processors execute a commercially available real time multi-tasking operating system supporting, preemptive multi-tasking, file management and network interfaces. These six processors in the system are networked together. The spacecraft interface baseline is an extension of the network, which links the six processors. The final selection for Processor busses, processor chips, network interfaces, and high-speed data interfaces will be made during mid 2002.

Schnurr, Richard G.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Implicit Thermochemical Nonequilibrium Flow Simulations on Unstructured Grids using GPUs

Thermochemical nonequilibrium flow simulation capabilities have been previously implemented, verified, and validated for central processing unit (CPU) systems in NASA’s unstructured-grid computational fluid dynamics solver FUN3D. Many exascale-class high-performance computing systems will rely on graphics processing unit (GPU) architectures for high throughput and energy efficiency; thus, CPU-based scientific computing software unable to effectively utilize these systems must be updated. In this work, we present a CUDA C++ implementation of FUN3D’s thermochemical nonequilibrium flow simulation capabilities targeting NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. An overview of the porting and optimization strategy is described and performance comparisons with other recent architectures are presented. Scaling to thousands of GPUs is demonstrated, yielding computational performance equivalent to that of several million CPU cores. The implementation enables efficient, high-fidelity, scale-resolving simulations of thermochemical nonequilibrium flows for many applications including atmospheric entry, hypersonics, and combustion.

GPU↗

NASA NTRS1999

Information Technology and the Autonomous Control of a Mars In-Situ Propellant Production System

With the rapidly increasing performance of information technology, i.e., computer hardware and software systems, as well as networks and communication systems, a new capability is being developed that holds the clear promise of greatly increased exploration capability, along with dramatically reduced design, development, and operating costs. These new intelligent systems technologies, utilizing knowledge-based software and very high performance computer systems, will provide new design and development tools, scheduling mechanisms, and vehicle and system health monitoring capabilities. In addition, specific technologies such as neural nets will provide a degree of machine intelligence and associated autonomy which has previously been unavailable to the mission and spacecraft designer and to the system operator. One of the most promising applications of these new information technologies is to the area of in situ resource utilization. Useful resources such as oxygen, compressed carbon dioxide, water, methane, and buffer gases can be extracted and/or generated from planetary atmospheres, such as the Martian atmosphere. These products, when used for propulsion and life-support needs can provide significant savings in the launch mass and costs for both robotic and crewed missions. In the longer term the utilization of indigenous resources is an enabling technology that is vital to sustaining long duration human presence on Mars. This paper will present the concepts that are currently under investigation and development for mining the Martian atmosphere, such as temperature-swing adsorption, zirconia electrolysis etc., to create propellants and life-support materials. This description will be followed by an analysis of the information technology and control needs for the reliable and autonomous operation of such processing plants in a fault tolerant manner, as well as the approach being taken for the development of the controlling software. Finally, there will be a brief discussion of the verification and validation process so crucial to the implementation of mission-critical software.

Gross, Anthony R.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Parallelization of NAS Benchmarks for Shared Memory Multiprocessors

This paper presents our experiences of parallelizing the sequential implementation of NAS benchmarks using compiler directives on SGI Origin2000 distributed shared memory (DSM) system. Porting existing applications to new high performance parallel and distributed computing platforms is a challenging task. Ideally, a user develops a sequential version of the application, leaving the task of porting to new generations of high performance computing systems to parallelization tools and compilers. Due to the simplicity of programming shared-memory multiprocessors, compiler developers have provided various facilities to allow the users to exploit parallelism. Native compilers on SGI Origin2000 support multiprocessing directives to allow users to exploit loop-level parallelism in their programs. Additionally, supporting tools can accomplish this process automatically and present the results of parallelization to the users. We experimented with these compiler directives and supporting tools by parallelizing sequential implementation of NAS benchmarks. Results reported in this paper indicate that with minimal effort, the performance gain is comparable with the hand-parallelized, carefully optimized, message-passing implementations of the same benchmarks.

Waheed, Abdul↗

NASA NTRS1991

Enhancing aeropropulsion research with high-speed interactive computing

NASA-Lewis has committed to a long range goal of creating a numerical test cell for aeropropulsion research and development. Efforts are underway to develop a first generation Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS). The NPSS will provide a unique capability to numerically simulate advanced propulsion systems from nose to tail. Two essential ingredients to the NPSS are: (1) experimentally validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes; and (2) high performing computing systems (hardware and software) that will permit those codes to be used efficiently. To this end, NASA-Lewis is using high speed, interactive computing as a means for achieving Integrated CFD and Experiments (ICE). The development is described of a prototype ICE system for multistage compressor flow physics research.

Szuch, John R.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Enhancing aeropropulsion research with high-speed interactive computing

Szuch, John R.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Performance of the Wavelet Decomposition on Massively Parallel Architectures

Traditionally, Fourier Transforms have been utilized for performing signal analysis and representation. But although it is straightforward to reconstruct a signal from its Fourier transform, no local description of the signal is included in its Fourier representation. To alleviate this problem, Windowed Fourier transforms and then wavelet transforms have been introduced, and it has been proven that wavelets give a better localization than traditional Fourier transforms, as well as a better division of the time- or space-frequency plane than Windowed Fourier transforms. Because of these properties and after the development of several fast algorithms for computing the wavelet representation of any signal, in particular the Multi-Resolution Analysis (MRA) developed by Mallat, wavelet transforms have increasingly been applied to signal analysis problems, especially real-life problems, in which speed is critical. In this paper we present and compare efficient wavelet decomposition algorithms on different parallel architectures. We report and analyze experimental measurements, using NASA remotely sensed images. Results show that our algorithms achieve significant performance gains on current high performance parallel systems, and meet scientific applications and multimedia requirements. The extensive performance measurements collected over a number of high-performance computer systems have revealed important architectural characteristics of these systems, in relation to the processing demands of the wavelet decomposition of digital images.

El-Ghazawi, Tarek A.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Influence of Computer Architecture on Performance and Scaling for Hypersonic Flow Simulations

It is critical to understand how hypersonic simulation tools perform on a range of computational platforms. This information will aid in the acquisition of appropriate hardware and the potential refactoring of hypersonic codes to run on different systems. In this paper, we consider two representative high-speed reacting flow cases: a model Mach 8 hypersonic waverider glide vehicle and a model hydrocarbon-fueled hypersonic ramjet propulsion system. In both scenarios, the flow fields are in chemical non-equilibrium and are modeled by the multi-species reacting Navier-Stokes equations. For these simulations we use several hypersonic simulation tools, including US3D, Kestrel, FUN3D, and the JENRER© flow solver. We explore several high performance computing systems containing IntelR© XeonR© Platinum processors, AMD EPYCTM7702 processors, and NVIDIAR© Tesla V100 devices. We compare performance and strong scaling between the different systems.

CPU↗