August 1988

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A Cray Y-MP, the fastest supercomputer in the world, arrived at NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, and underwent acceptance tests in the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Facility. The NAS was established as a national facility available to leading U.S. research institutions through a national network. It had long-term support from Congress to use the fastest available computers to achieve rapid progress in U.S. aerospace work and in other fields such as weather, astrophysics, and chemistry. Supercomputer systems were complementing and extending aerospace research being done in wind tunnels and high-velocity (4,000 to 15,000 mph) shock tunnels. The new Y-MP central processor would not only solve old problems four times as fast as existing systems, but also would be used to investigate flow phenomena that could not be investigated currently by wind tunnels or computers. Another important application of the NAS supercomputer system would be the modeling of airflows for hypersonic vehicles such as the National Aero-Space Plane and the Space Shuttle.

Ames was the first customer to take delivery of this new supercomputer, expected to be fully operational by January 1989. (ARC Release 88-80)

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