NASA ‘Flies’ Planes in Supercomputer

The Cray-2 is only four feet high and four feet in diameter, but the new $17-million device at NASA’s Ames Research Center is the world’s fastest, most powerful supercomputer.

Because its micro-miniaturized electronic circuits are packed so close together, the compact machine is the first supercomputer to have components immersed in a colorless fluorocarbon liquid that prevents overheating. The liquid also often is used as artificial human blood plasma.

NASA spokesman Peter Waller called the arrangement “kind of an electronic brain.”

Faster Than Predecessors

The supercomputer is three times faster than previous generation computers and can perform 250 million continuous calculations a second. Eventually, researchers expect it to perform 4 billion calculations per second.

Its memory has a monstrous storage capacity of 256 million 64-bit words, 16 times more than its predecessors.

“Certainly, this is a spooky device, and what’s coming up is even spookier,” said Waller, adding that experts predict the Cray-2 will be replaced by a new, improved model within three or four years.

The sophisticated supercomputer should lead to improvements in all areas of aircraft development, he said.

“You’re basically flying a plane in a computer,” said Waller, adding that despite the Cray-2’s expensive price tag, it costs less than repeated wind tunnel construction and testing otherwise needed for aircraft research.

Wind Tunnel Not Needed

With the supercomputer, scientists at the center south of San Francisco can program various flight shapes on a three-dimensional matrix and solve airflow problems without building a wind tunnel.

“It will let them (researchers) look at flight shapes never examined, and that should mean that all aircraft will be improved,” Waller said.

NASA’s funding for the Cray-2 should be a boost to the sagging supercomputer industry, Waller said.