Current state and future direction of computer systems at NASA Langley Research Center

Computer systems have advanced at a rate unmatched by any other area of technology. As performance has dramatically increased there has been an equally dramatic reduction in cost. This constant cost performance improvement has precipitated the pervasiveness of computer systems into virtually all areas of technology. This improvement is due primarily to advances in microelectronics. Most people are now convinced that the new generation of supercomputers will be built using a large number (possibly thousands) of high performance microprocessors. Although the spectacular improvements in computer systems have come about because of these hardware advances, there has also been a steady improvement in software techniques. In an effort to understand how these hardware and software advances will effect research at NASA LaRC, the Computer Systems Technical Committee drafted this white paper to examine the current state and possible future directions of computer systems at the Center. This paper discusses selected important areas of computer systems including real-time systems, embedded systems, high performance computing, distributed computing networks, data acquisition systems, artificial intelligence, and visualization.