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