CSC Accelerates NASA Climate Research With Supercomputers

When President Bush charged NASA with addressing global warming and its impact on humanity and industry, the agency knew that scientific knowledge wasn’t enough. NASA needed more power. CSC helped to provide that power in the form of one of the largest supercomputers in the country.

The installation and integration of the supercomputer is part of CSC’s effort to help NASA ’s Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) achieve a 32-fold improvement in computing power. The installation, part of a seven-year contract with Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is the first major step toward the agency’s goal. For the duration of the project, CSC will work with NASA scientists to continuously improve prediction capabilities with high-powered systems.

Climate monitoring - a boost with technology

President Bush’s Climate Change Research Initiative, a $1.7 billion project, was the catalyst for NASA to re-evaluate its research tools. To predict climate changes, NASA is creating computer-based models of the earth and its systems. These models monitor the interrelationships of the systems and the changing variables that influence them, and they simulate climate events. With the power of a supercomputer, the effects of major climate changes, such as the melting of glaciers, can be simulated in seconds or minutes - depending on the power of the computer.

The center’s new supercomputer, HP’s AlphaServer SC45, doubles the agency’s current capacity, according to Bob Scudamore, vice president of CSC’s High Performance Computing Center of Excellence. The AlphaServer contains 512 processors and provides a peak processing capacity of more than 1 TeraFlop.

"The scientists had a real need for more computing strength - especially in simulation and high fidelity modeling, which created the demand for more power, memory and storage," said Scudamore. "Without this type of power, scientists would have to document climate changes in real time. In most cases, it would take years to get concrete results."

With the power of the latest technology, the team is now able to gather and process very large volumes of data, which is critical to climate forecasting. Processing large data sets is also enabling research in such areas as bioinformatics, where a whole new industry has been formed.

Build it and they will come

In addition to complex research challenges, the team also has to contend with changes in technology. According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months. This means that the capability to build new, faster machines increases so quickly that machines have a life expectancy of three to four years. That can be costly, especially when the machines are premium performance supercomputers.

Scudamore, who oversees CSC’s High Performance Computing (HPC) Center of Excellence, stresses that in light of this constant technological growth, establishing a long-term approach to the project as well as the client relationship is the key to success.

"Many of our clients are involved in science and engineering, where the demand for computer power is particularly intense," said Scudamore. "These projects usually span a minimum of five years, and we spend a great deal of time working to improve the capabilities of the technology as it advances."

CSC’s Centers of Excellence

The HPC center is one of CSC’s 17 Centers of Excellence - facilities that serve as pockets of expertise with resources dedicated to a specific technology, application, methodology or industry. This degree of expertise is critical in the intensely competitive HPC market, which is estimated to be worth $8 billion in hardware and software systems and associated peripherals, including scientific visualization components.

The HPC center offers an integrated approach to HPC system design, which includes the computer engine’s storage system, system operation and tuning, scientific visualization, high-speed networking, code migration and modernization, system acquisition and facilities design. In addition, the center offers outsourcing, user services and application support.

Five special interest groups comprise the center: software engineering and code modernization, systems operation and administration, networking, storage and file management systems and integrated system design.

According to Scudamore, the center is called upon not only for specific HPC projects, but also for larger projects that include HPC as a sub-element. Current clients, in addition to NASA Goddard, include the NASA Ames Research Center, the Alabama Research and Education Network, the U.S. Department of Defense, BAE Systems and the United Kingdom Research Councils.

For NASA alone, CSC is engaged in three separate supercomputer projects. The agency’s computational plan includes the addition of a 32-processor HP SC45 system at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at Columbia University in New York City, and the installation of 880 additional processors to the existing HP system at Goddard Space Flight Center this September. CSC’s installations are expected to boost NASA’s computational capability more than three times its current capacity.

Modeling the future

Supercomputer processing power has increased over time and cost has decreased, leading to the prevalence of supercomputers in industries ranging from banking and automotive to Internet service providers and engineering. Though still a substantial investment, companies integrate supercomputers into their networks to help save money. Running simulations of car crashes, for example, can help manufacturers fine-tune design elements before the production stage - a huge cost savings.

NASA’s modeling, though, has a truly global impact. With supercomputers powering NASA’s research, scientists will influence economic policies and disaster recovery in anticipation of what is to come on our planet. It beats waiting years to see what happens when and if the polar ice caps melt.

Related Information:

Contact Us and Let Our Experience Help You Produce Results.

Read about CSC’s High Performance Computing Center of Excellence.

Read a press release about the project.

Find out more about thought leadership and CSC’s Leading Edge Forum.

Find out more about some of CSC’s projects for NASA:

Terahertz Optoelectronic Devices: Helping NASA Communicate


Putting the Internet in Space


Hubble Decision Support