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: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 05 2017, @02:09PM
But, they're offering $50K in prizes! You could, like, coast on that with 'za and video games for years. You might even be able to score some headphones so mom and dad won't stomp on the floor so much when the action in the basement gets too loud. On the other hand, if you're a Fortran programmer mom and dad probably can't hear you anyway (batteries on the hearing aids ran out).
Washington DC delenda est.