lamaster@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Hugh LaMaster) (05/10/90)
Does anyone know what Grumman and the Naval Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Laboratory are planning? I just saw an announcement in Information Week that an 11 year contract (!) which could be worth as much as $204M (!) was awarded to Grumman to supply NOARL "with a supercomputer that will be used to preduct the behavior of the oceans and the atmosphere", and $41M will be used "...for Grumman to assemble the supercomputer." As always, I am sure the reality is rather more complex than a summary of a press release, but, I am surprised that I haven't heard of this before. Does anyone have the details? Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-9, UUCP ames!lamaster NASA Ames Research Center ARPA lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov Moffett Field, CA 94035 Phone: (415)604-6117
mccalpin@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (John D Mccalpin) (05/10/90)
In article <49043@ames.arc.nasa.gov> lamaster@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Hugh LaMaster) writes: > >Does anyone know what Grumman and the Naval Oceanographic and Atmospheric >Research Laboratory are planning? I just saw an announcement in >Information Week that an 11 year contract (!) which could be worth >as much as $204M (!) was awarded to Grumman to supply NOARL >"with a supercomputer that will be used to preduct the behavior >of the oceans and the atmosphere", and $41M will be used >"...for Grumman to assemble the supercomputer." > >As always, I am sure the reality is rather more complex than a summary >of a press release, but, I am surprised that I haven't heard of this >before. Does anyone have the details? > > Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-9, UUCP ames!lamaster > NASA Ames Research Center ARPA lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov My guess is that this is the same contract which has been bouncing around for about 3 years. NOARL is the new conglomerate that used to be INO (Institute for Naval Oceanography) and NORDA (Naval Ocean Research and Development Activity) and maybe some other groups. The machine was originally supposed to be for INO, but INO never really got off the ground. This was due to a combination of a director that no one wanted to work for, a location that no one wanted to live in, and a completely unrealistic expectation of the number of available Ph.D. physical oceanographers/numerical modellers in circulation. Back to the story.... The machine that they chose is a Cray Y/MP-8/864 as I recall. The bidding part was mostly about who was going to install and operate it.... Another piece of the $240 Million is that there are to be two identical machines -- one at NOARL (Mississippi) and one at Fleet Numerical Oceanography Center (Monterrey) (I think the latter is the correct outfit). Most of the money was for maintenance and management. I was in on this about 2-3 years ago when one of my colleagues at Florida State (a CDC employee) spent the summer in Minneapolis working on optimizing one of the benchmark codes. This particular global ocean model had a working set of 96 MW in 64-bit precision! ETA never could get the wall-clock time to pass the requirement. They probably could now since the paging software was greatly improved last spring/summer, but it is a bit late! The ironic thing is that this particular benchmark was proposed by an ETA salescritter who had apparently been reading too much of the ETA marketing propaganda!!! Apparently the plan was to require the code to be run without modifications, which would knock out the Cray Y/MP. They were counting on the Cray-2 not being fast enough to compete... I later met the Cray analyst who implemented the out-of-core solver on the Y/MP, which did meet the wall-clock timing requirements. I can't remember his name, but he was visiting FSU when we were deciding what sort of Cray to order to replace the ETA-10G. -- John D. McCalpin mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu Assistant Professor mccalpin@delocn.udel.edu College of Marine Studies, U. Del. mccalpin@scri1.scri.fsu.edu