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Fortran Greybeards: NASA Wants You!

posted by martyb on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-fast-cheap dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

NASA wants scientific computer experts to take a look at one of its oldest software suites in the hope they can speed it up.

The code in question is called "FUN3D" and was first developed in the 1980s. It's still an important part of the agency's computational fluid dynamics (CFD) capability, and had its most recent release in September 2016.

The agency is now sponsoring a competition with the aim of getting it to go at least 10 times faster. If you can crank it up to ten thousand times faster – without any loss of accuracy – all the better.

Michael Hetle, program executive at NASA's Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program (TACP) explains that "some concepts are just so complex, it's difficult for even the fastest supercomputers to analyse these models in real time. Achieving a speed-up in this software by orders of magnitude hones the edge we need to advance our technology to the next level".

[Update: Original story title was taken directly from the referenced article; updated to remove condescension. --martyb]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:02PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:02PM (#504572)

    Aw, forget it, not FORTRAN. Greybeards not intereseted. "Modern" Fortran is bad enough, but Ruby??? Really???

    FUN3D Software:

    Description-

    The FUN3D software is written predominantly in Modern Fortran. The software is evolving
    steadily in multi-language directions for reasons other than performance. Currently, a standard
    computational task in the CFD area takes from thousands to millions of computational
    core-hours.

    FUN3D is:

    • Code developed by the US Government at US taxpayer expense
    • Flow analysis solver is written in Fortran, other components are written in C++ and Ruby
    • Code which can be applied to a wide range of fluid dynamic problems, and
    • Has a number of code features which represent leading-edge technology
    • Is export controlled research code

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:12PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:12PM (#504576)

    you forgot the good bit -- down at the bottom:

    This material is declared a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:17PM (#504582)

      No, it's classified instead. But you should totally treat it like pubic domain code and get locked up in Trump Tower where your pussy will be grabbed daily.