NASA Langley Installs Next Generation Starbridge Hypercomputer

March 25, 2003 – Hampton, Virginia and Midvale, Utah. Utah-based Starbridge Systems announced today that NASA has purchased a Starbridge HC38 Hypercomputer for use at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The HC38 uses revolutionary technology developed by Starbridge that yields significant benefits in performance, size and power consumption compared to conventional supercomputers.

The most recent Hypercomputer was installed at Langley Tuesday, March 18, 2003 by Starbridge Vice President of Engineering James Yardley. In addition to the installation of the Hypercomputer, Mr. Yardley performed a short briefing and demonstration of the Starbridge reconfigurable technology for NASA scientists and engineers at Langley Research Center.

NASA Langley scientist Dr. Olaf Storaasli also joined Mr. Yardley in conducting a March 18 seminar for Christopher Newport University graduate students learning to program with Starbridge’s proprietary Viva development environment and programming language under Storaasli’s direction.

The current Hypercomputer purchase, the result of a NASA Creativity and Innovation grant won by NASA Langley’s Analytical and Computational Methods Branch, is the third Starbridge high performance computing system procured by NASA Langley. In March 2001, Langley acquired a Starbridge HAL-15 system. The Center purchased a second HAL-15 system in February 2002.
“We are very pleased that NASA Langley has decided to purchase this next generation Hypercomputer,” says Starbridge CEO Daniel Oswald. “This is another major step forward in the ongoing technology development relationship between NASA and Starbridge, and reflects our shared commitment to bringing the advantages of reconfigurable technology to bear in a growing number of significant applications.”

The relationship between Starbridge and NASA began formally in May 2000, when NASA and Starbridge entered a Space Act agreement to adapt NASA’s GPS (general purpose equation solver) Algorithm to a Starbridge Hypercomputer, using the proprietary Starbridge Viva programming language and operating environment. NASA is currently using Starbridge technology in several areas, such as: structural, electromagnetic and fluid analysis; radiation analysis for astronaut safety; atmospheric science analysis; digital signal processing; pattern recognition; and acoustic analysis.

According to NASA Langley’s Dr. Storaasli, “Reconfigurable computing such as this may open new vistas in performance, allowing us to compute faster and more effectively than with traditional CPUs. The purchase of this new system represents a new stage of involvement between NASA Langley and Starbridge. Our experience with the HAL 15 systems was a successful pathfinding and validation process. We plan to use this new, next generation Starbridge system to tackle comprehensive scientific and engineering applications of direct interest to NASA, such as structural and materials analysis.”

Storaasli adds that he and other NASA colleagues envision numerous potential additional future uses for the technology, including service as command centers for spacecraft and satellites.

According to NASA scientist Dr. Robert Singleterry, who won a NASA Administrator’s Fellowship to work on-site at Starbridge in 2003, approximately 15 NASA scientists work with the current HAL systems-a number which he predicts will grow steadily in the next several years.

About Starbridge Systems

Utah-based Starbridge Systems was founded in 1998 to harness and exploit the inherent advantages of reconfigurable technologies to create a new and better way of computing. Reconfigurable computing technologies, based on programmable circuits called Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) combine high performance, flexibility, versatility and efficiencies of size, weight and electrical power consumption. Starbridge’s powerful proprietary tools and solutions-Hypercomputers and the Viva operating system, development environment and high-level programming language-transform programmable FPGA chips into general purpose high performance computing systems with unprecedented power and flexibility. Starbridge’s products enable elegant solutions to problems that were previously impossible or impractical to solve, and empowers the development of disruptive new tools and applications that will expand and create markets and extend the frontiers of possibility for many industries.

For further information, please contact sales@starbridgesystems.com.

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