NASA Makes Strong Impression at Record-Setting
SC05 Conference
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A record 9,777 people converged
on Seattle, WA, November 12–18 for SC05, the premiere international conference
for high-performance computing, networking, storage,
and analysis. This participation represented a 22%
increase over 2004. Attendees from school-age children
to seasoned scientists visited NASA’s engaging
research exhibit, which had a high-profile location
adjacent to Intel Corp.
Image
at left: NASA’s
SC05 research exhibit featured applications from
all four Mission Directorates. Goddard Space Flight
Center contributed six demonstrations on Earth and
space science topics (Image credit: David Robertson,
NASA Ames Research Center). |
The NASA exhibit showcased a variety of applications from all four Mission
Directorates: Aeronautics, Exploration Systems, Science, and Space Operations.
Demonstrations were on workstation pedestals along the exhibit perimeter
and in a central presentation area outfitted with a large plasma screen
and a nine-screen HyperWall. Researchers connected to Goddard Space Flight
Center (GSFC) presented six demonstrations on Earth and space science
topics.
Gaining deeper insights from Earth observations was the theme of “Interactive
Image Segmentation with RHSEG and HSEGViewer.” Jim Tilton of CISTO
showed these software tools for producing and then visualizing
and manipulating image segmentation hierarchies, which contain several
segmentations, from coarser to higher levels of detail, of the same image.
Among the capabilities are classification and interactive labeling of
observation images. Tilton’s software is also being used for medical and other applications
(see “CISTO Engineer Receives Patent and GSFC IS&T Award,” CISTO
News, Summer 2005).
Two demonstrations detailed recent advances made using Computational
Technologies Project-funded software frameworks.
In “Cross-Organization
Coupling of Climate Models through ESMF,” Shujia
Zhou of the Software Integration and Visualization
Office (SIVO)/Northrop Grumman IT described how the
Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) has enabled
coupling of models from seven organizations within
a standardized software environment. Zhou also explained
an updated prototype based on ESMF and Common Component
Architecture software. In this prototype, the representative
atmosphere and ocean models ran on two separate Thunderhead
cluster partitions connected to the CISTO High End
Computer Network (HECN) team’s 10-gigabit-per-second
(Gbps) Lambda Network, with model data being exchanged
over the regional 10-Gbps DRAGON network.
The unprecedented Fall 2005 Atlantic hurricane season
was the subject of two demonstrations by GSFC scientists.
In “MAP ‘05—Project Hurricane,” Bill
Putman of SIVO described how GSFC’s GEOS4 and
GEOS5 Atmospheric General Circulation Models were run
on Columbia at .25-degree resolution four times per
day throughout the hurricane season. Through inclusion
of storm tracks and other output in Florida State University’s “Superensemble,” these
global models provided real-time guidance to National
Hurricane Center forecasters.
Dan Kokron of the Global Modeling and Assimilation
Office/SAIC presented “GEOS5—Columbia and
Hurricanes.” GEOS5 is the first major operational
system built from the ground up using ESMF and its
object-oriented concepts. Notably, GEOS5 was one of
the earliest models to predict a New Orleans landfall
for Hurricane Katrina and was consistent in its landfall
prediction from two days beforehand.
Hurricane modeling presentations on the HyperWall
included live feeds of data sets exchanged between
Columbia and CISTO’s NASA Center for Computational
Sciences over the recently upgraded 1-Gbps NASA Research
and Engineering Network path across the National LambdaRail.
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Image
above: A Space Weather Modeling Framework simulation
of the Halloween 2003 space storms depicts
the structure
of the large-scale solar magnetic fields on October
27,2003 (Image credit: Ilia Roussev, University
of Michigan).
Image
above: Hurricane Katrina’s observed track is
overlaid in blue
along with the predicted tracks from the GEOS4 (solid
black) and GEOS5 (dashed black) models initialized
at 12:00Z on August 27, 2005. The cloud imagery comes
from the MODIS sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite
(Image credit: Bill Putman, GSFC).
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General relativity came to the fore in “Modeling Gravitational
Wave Sources for LISA,” presented by the Gravitational Astrophysics
Laboratory’s Dae-Il Choi (USRA), Michael Koppitz (NRC), and
Jim Van Meter (NRC). Using Columbia, the group has been modeling
mergers of two comparable-mass black holes and calculating
the resulting gravitational wave signatures. The calculated waveforms
will be applied to analyzing and interpreting observations from the
Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a joint NASA-European
Space Agency mission.
As GSFC coordinator, Jarrett Cohen of CISTO/GST, Inc. participated in
NASA exhibit planning and preparation and produced publicity
materials for the demonstrations.
Across the show floor in the Internet2 exhibit, the HECN team supported
a demonstration of the electronic-Very Long Baseline Interferometry
(e-VLBI) project. Employing the same set of technologies
used for iGrid 2005 (see “CISTO
Supports iGrid 2005 Demonstrations” in this issue), the demonstration
correlated radio telescope data from e-VLBI sites in the
United States, Sweden, and Japan in real time.
http://sc05.supercomputing.org/
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