NASA has officially presented Athenathe most powerful and efficient supercomputer that has been developed to date.
This new system is destined to become the centerpiece of future space exploration projects, as well as scientific research.
Athena is part of the program High-End Computing Capability (HECC) and is housed in the Modular Supercomputing Facility del Ames Research Center of NASA, in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. Its existence responds to the need to face increasingly complex missions that require a calculation capacity greater than that of previous generations.
According to NASA, This supercomputer allows you to run extremely advanced simulationsfrom rocket launches to the design of next-generation aircraft. Thanks to these simulations, the agency can save millions of dollars in physical testing, reducing both time and costs.
«Exploration has always pushed NASA to the limits of what is computationally possible. With Athena, we expand our ability to deliver computing resources tailored to the changing needs of each mission,» he explained. Kevin Murphyscientific data manager and project leader.
With a maximum power greater than 20 petaflops, equivalent to more than 20,000 billion calculations per secondAthena clearly surpasses any of its predecessors. The system It is composed of 1,024 nodes equipped with high-core AMD EPYC processors and has 786 TB of memoryallowing you to process huge amounts of complex data.
In addition to physical simulations, Athena will be used to train advanced artificial intelligence models, capable of processing petabytes of information from satellites and space missions. Among its applications highlights the simulation of complex atmospheric patterns and the prediction of the effects of solar storms on Earth.
Athena began operating at full capacity on January 14 and is available to both NASA researchers and external scientists collaborating with the agency. NASA sees Athena as the digital foundation for its next era of discovery.