Drucella Andersen
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                                                   
May 7, 1993
(Phone:  202/358-4733)

Peter W. Waller
Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif.
(Phone:  415/604-9000)


RELEASE:  93-80

FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTER CAN BOOST U.S. AEROSPACE INDUSTRY

   NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif., has added 
a new computer to its Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) 
supercomputer complex that will boost the computing power of the 
system by more than six times.

   Research scientists use the NAS computers by programming a 
proposed new aircraft design into the supercomputer.  The 
computer then solves equations millions of times to replicate the 
"real" air flow around the proposed aircraft design.

   "These advances in supercomputer aerodynamics are important 
because aerospace is the largest favorable contributor to the 
U.S. balance of trade -- $30 billion last year," said Victor L. 
Peterson, Ames' Deputy Director.  "The U.S. share of the world 
aerospace market has been declining, but machines like the C90 
should help reverse this trend."

   The NAS is a unique national facility linking approximately 
1,400 industry, university, government and NASA users via a 
high-speed, wide-area network known as AEROnet.

   The new Cray Y-MP C90 supercomputer, the world's fastest, is 
now in full operation after completing its acceptance tests.  It 
routinely will perform more than 6 billion floating points per 
second (FLOPS), up from 1 billion FLOPS for the current NAS 
system.  FLOPS is a measure of a computing system's speed in 
doing basic arithmetic operations.

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   The C90 is one of the newest "parallel processing" computers, 
which use many processors to work simultaneously on various parts 
of a problem.  The C90 has processors and a memory capacity of 
256 million words.  An upgrade to 1 billion words of memory is 
scheduled for September.  Cost of the system is $48 million.

   For 20 years, Ames has worked closely with supercomputer 
makers on advanced hardware and software to reach the 
hyper-speeds needed for computer simulation of aerodynamics.  
Ames is NASA's lead center for supercomputer research.  Its 
supercomputer systems and facilities are the most advanced in the 
aerospace field and among the best in the world.

   According to Dr. F. Ron Bailey, Ames' Director of 
Aerophysics, speeds for NASA's next large computer, to be 
acquired in 3 or 4 years, might well do around 50 billion FLOPS.  
Speeds could reach about a trillion FLOPS by around the year 
2000.  
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