‘You Can Call Me HAL’

Langley Takes Delivery Of Star Bridge Supercomputer

By JIM ROBERTS
Researcher News editor

Representatives of Star Bridge Systems, Inc. visited Langley Research Center on March 27 to demonstrate and deliver one of its Hyper Algorithmic Logic (HAL-15) supercomputers.

Star Bridge President Brent Ward and Chief Executive Officer Kent Gilson presented the supercomputer to Doug Dwoyer, Langley’s Associate Director for Research and Technology Competencies, after press and technical briefings in the Pearl Young Theater.

HAL-15 operates 2,000 times faster than a Pentium 800 and takes up a fraction of the space. It also plugs into a 110-volt wall outlet and requires no special room or cooling system.

“We believe it is nothing less than the computer reinvented,” Ward said.

HAL-15 is the first of a new breed of high-performance computers that replaces the traditional central processing units with faster Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), specialty chips on a circuit board that can reconfigure themselves hundreds or thousands of times a second. The FPGAs make it possible for multiple applications to run at the same time on the same chips, making them thousands of times faster than traditional commercial CPUs.

Also participating in the ceremony were Langley researchers Robert Singleterry and Olaf Storaasli, who visited Star Bridge’s headquarters in Midvale, Utah, to train on HAL-15’s proprietary programming language, VIVA. The graphic-based language facilitates rapid custom software development by the system’s users.

“Once you get your hands on it, it’s pretty stimulating,” Singleterry said.
Storaasli said supercomputing is responsible for the advancements being made in all areas of science. “We want to be able to go the fastest and best and exploit this,” he said. “We want to be on the cutting edge of technology.”

Langley will use HAL-15 to explore solutions for structural, electromagnetic and fluid analysis, radiation analysis for astronaut safety, atmospheric science analysis, digital signal processing, pattern recognition, and acoustic analysis.

“With better computing,” Singleterry said, “we hope to get a better world ... and a more economical and cheaper world.”

Besides Langley, other initial users will include the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Department of Defense.

Langley Research Center employees Olaf Storaasli (center) and Robert Singleterry (right) participate in the Hyper Algorithmic Logic (HAL-15) supercomputer “unveiling” on March 27. HAL-15 operates 2,000 times faster than a Pentium 800 and takes up a fraction of the space.

Photo by Jeff Caplan