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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] 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 [theregister.co.uk].

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 [nasa.gov] in September 2016.

The agency is now sponsoring a competition [nasa.gov] 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”.

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