[CSEE Talk] talk: Hans Mark on Scientific Computation at Ames and in NASA, 4pm Thr 5/22

[Tim Finin]

         UMBC Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research
           Distinguished Computational Science Lecture Series

          Tales of Scientific Computation at Ames and in NASA

                             Dr. Hans Mark
           University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering
                               Austin, TX

              4:00pm Thursday, 22 May 2014, ITE 456, UMBC

This is personal story about how high performance computing was
developed at the NASA-Ames Research Center and elsewhere in
NASA. There were people at Ames who were first class aerodynamic
scientists and who could use computers.  Thus, it was decided that
some procurement short cuts were justified.  We acquired computers in
three quantum steps.  First, in 1969, there was an IBM duplex 360/67
which was captured by a "midnight supply operation" from the Air
Force.  Next, in 1972, the ILLIAC IV at the University of Illinois
became available because of an act of domestic terrorism and financial
help from DARPA.  Finally in 1975, there was one of Seymour Cray's CDC
7600s, also from an Air Force source.  In 1981, by which time Seymour
Cray had his own company, a Cray 1S appeared at Ames, followed in 1984
by CDC Cyber 205 and a Cray X-MP/22.  The last named machines were
made available because of shameless earmarking by NASA Headquarters.
However, confession being good for the soul, the NASA-Goddard Space
Flight Center also benefited from the earmarking with twenty million
dollar fund to develop a truly massively parallel computer, the
Goodyear MPP with 16,000 processors, which was delivered in 1984.  Now
we are working with people at Ames on a quantum computer manufactured
by D‐Wave Systems, Inc.  The machine was installed at Ames last year
and we are now working on various "benchmark" tests and developing
operating systems for the machine.  We believe that there is great
promise for much more capable computing machines in this new quantum
technology.

Dr. Hans Mark is a leading expert in the fields of both aerospace
design an national defense policy.  For fourteen years Dr. Mark was
associated with the University of California's Nuclear Weapons
Laboratory at Livermore, serving as Physics Division Leader from 1960
to 1964. He was named Under Secretary of the Air Force an Director of
the National Reconnaissance Office in 1977.  While Director of the
National Reconnaissance Office, he initiated the development of a new
reconnaissance satellite system an the upgrade of two others.  As
Secretary of the Air Force (1979 to 1981), Dr. Mark initiated the
establishment of the U.S. Air Force Space Command.  During his tenure
as Deputy Administrator of NASA from 1981 to 1984, Dr. Mark oversaw
the first fourteen Space Shuttle flights and was a leading contributor
to the establishment of the U.S. Space Station Program.  Over the past
twenty years, Dr. Mark has served as Chancellor of the University of
Texas System (1984 to 1992) and is still actively involved in research
and teaching at the University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering
in Austin, TX.  From 1998 to 2001, Dr. Mark was on leave from the
University to serve in the Pentagon as Director of Defense Research
and Engineering.  Dr. Mark received an A.B. Degree in physics from the
University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. in physics from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  He has been member of
the National Academy of Engineering for three years an holds six
honorary doctorates.

Host: Prof. Milton Halem, halem at umbc.edu