CT PROJECT OVERVIEW
Objectives
The goal of NASA's Computational Technologies (CT) Project is to demonstrate the potential afforded by teraFLOPS (trillion floating-point operations per second) performance to further our understanding and ability to predict the dynamic interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting the solar-terrestrial environment and the universe.
Project activities are focused on selected NASA Grand Challenge science applications. Many of the Grand Challenges address the integration and execution of multiple advanced disciplinary models into single multidisciplinary applications. Examples of these include coupled oceanic-atmospheric-biospheric interactions, 3-D simulations of the chemically perturbed atmosphere, solid Earth modeling, solar flare modeling, and 3-D compressible magnetohydrodynamics. Others are concerned with analysis and assimilation into models of massive datasets taken by orbiting sensors. These problems are significant in that they have both social and political implications. The science requirements inherent in the NASA Grand Challenge applications necessitate computing performance into the teraFLOPS range
The project is driven by five specific objectives:
- Support the development of massively parallel, scalable, multidisciplinary models and data processing algorithms.
- Make available prototype, scalable, parallel architectures, and massive data storage systems to CT researchers.
- Prepare the software environments to facilitate scientific exploration and sharing of information and tools.
- Develop data management tools for high-speed access management and visualization of data with teraFLOPS computers.
- Demonstrate the scientific and computational impact for Earth and space science applications.
Approach
The CT approach involves several components:
- Use NASA Cooperative Agreement Notices (CAN's) to select Grand Challenge Investigator Teams that require teraFLOPS computing for NASA science problems. There are currently 11 collaborative Investigator teams made up of physical and computational scientists, software and systems engineers, and algorithm designers. The Investigators provide a means to rapidly evaluate and guide the maturation process for scalable massively parallel algorithms and system software and to thereby reduce the risks assumed by later CT Grand Challenge researchers when adopting massively parallel computing technologies.
- Provide successive generations of scalable computing systems for the Grand Challenge Applications
- Provide a software development environment and computational techniques support to the Investigators.
Organization
The CT Project is part of NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO). Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) serves as the lead center for the CT Project and collaborates with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). At GSFC, the project personnel are part of the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office.
Points of Contact
Jim Fischer
Goddard Space Flight Center
James.R.Fischer@nasa.gov
301-286-3465
Robert Ferraro
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Robert.Ferraro@jpl.nasa.gov
818-354-1340
