SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 05 2017, @02:17PM
They're looking for 1337 coders to deliver million dollar software for $50K, which by the time it ever got to you would already have had the government's cut of 60% of your work pre-removed, so that in the end you would have delivered incredible value for less than minimum wage. In 1980. And then the code (which the fine print will of course give NASA full rights to) will be handed via a sweetheart deal to a 3rd party contractor owned and run by an old chum of the NASA director, who'll turn around and bill NASA $100 million for licensing it back to the agency. A friend of the contractor's will "gift" a sweet condo in Barbados to the director of NASA, and everything will be on the up-and-up and everyone will be in the clear.
Washington DC delenda est.