AEDC-Eglin debut high performance computer Published Sept. 8, 2009 By Philip Lorenz III AEDC/PA Arnold Air Force Base, Tenn. -- After a rigorous multi-year effort, a ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the successful acquisition and official implementation of a new high performance computer (HPC) to be shared between Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) and the Air Force SEEK EAGLE Office (AFSEO) at Eglin AFB, Fla. Lance Baxter, director of the 649th Test System Squadron, said the new Silicon Graphics International HPC system, which resides at AEDC, signals a landmark step forward in the collaborative relationship between Arnold and the AFSEO. He also said the HPC provides a powerful computational and modeling tool to help both organizations tackle the more challenging physics problems encountered in their respective weapons systems testing environments. "This is a significant expansion of our computational ability here [at AEDC]," he said. "The modeling and simulation efforts that we have here at AEDC support integrated testing and evaluation across the board. This particular machine was specifically purchased for us by the high power computing initiative for a partnership that we had established with Eglin [AFB] to support the SEEK EAGLE enterprise. "In that enterprise we do modeling, simulation and wind tunnel testing, and they (AFSEO) do flight testing and integrate the whole program together to report out to the warfighters on store separation certification. They (AFSEO) look at different combinations of stores on different aircraft and a variety of flight regimes and certify that those are indeed safe and effective." He said the new computer system will help both organizations tackle the more technically demanding issues, including the complicated geometries of internal weapons bays, weapon launches and inlet and engine combinations that can create irregular air flow, severe acoustic and complex aero-thermodynamic environments. James Brock, AFSEO's technical director, said he has high expectations for the new HPC resource, but acknowledged that challenges still lie ahead. "What's special about today is it's the end of one phase, but it's only the beginning of what we can do and where we need to go with T&E [testing and evaluation] in the future," he said. "This [event] is really drawing a line in the sand for how we have taken this [modeling and simulation] resource to the next level to improve the T&E enterprise and our support to the acquisition community and the warfighter. This computational resource will enable us to do things better, faster and cheaper." Brock said the massively parallel computational capability supporting modeling and simulation is technically ahead of the software architectures, but he is optimistic about meeting that challenge as well. "The plan is that we'll aggressively migrate a number of our computationally intensive modeling and simulation tools to this system," he said. "And then we'll start utilizing the resource as much as possible. There's still work to be done on the software development side in order to take full advantage of this capability, but I know we'll get there. It's also interesting that we're already thinking about the next phase and what computational resources will be needed to support the vision and mission of the T&E Enterprise." Brock acknowledged there is already a backlog of flight test and evaluation projects at AFSEO waiting for a time slot on the new HPC asset at Arnold. "We have a number of projects on our plate right now that are great candidates for this environment," he said. "[Many of these] will be supporting the F-35 [Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter]. I'm hoping to get one of those projects going soon. Primarily, we've got the CFD [computational fluid dynamics] grids that are going through a rigorous validation effort so we plan to use the system to help generate the analytical data and then compare that with both wind tunnel test and flight test data to validate the models." "We also have a number of ongoing projects within the developmental weapons community. The small diameter bomb and JDAM [Joint Direct Attack Munition] are good candidates because there is always work to be done to understand compatibility issues associated with the new weapon variants and to provide the best capabilities to the field." he continued. "So, I'm sure those will be some of the top projects that will see action on the [HPC] system first." AEDC's Chief Technologist Dr. Ed Kraft and Brock have already been discussing what lies ahead for the partnership between AFSEO and AEDC. "We're looking at a different way of thinking, a new approach to this entire test and evaluation business," Brock explained. "To be totally honest, a large part of the cost associated with wind tunnel testing is just getting to the tunnel. Once you get there, taking data points is relatively inexpensive, but we've got to break that status quo mentality and mindset. We've got to plan from the beginning of how to do an efficient wind tunnel test. "Wind tunnel testing is not going away, but we certainly want to have the modeling and simulation tools and the capabilities in place so that we use them to augment wind tunnel testing and ultimately reduce the flight test requirements before we begin. "Compared to wind tunnel and other ground testing [support], flight testing is a big expense," he continued. "If we can reduce just one flight test from the test matrix, depending on the type of mission, we can save [approximately] $100,000 for a program." Regarding some of the software challenges that lie ahead, Brock said he has already seen progress on that front. "Fortunately there are some tools already available," he said. "Bill Sisson [ATA computing team lead] was telling me earlier about some software that we've gotten from SGI with this particular system. Hopefully, it will provide the scalability and load balancing which will allow you to run a problem on a thousand processors and you won't have 10 of them that are running 100 percent of the time while the rest, 990 of them, are working only five percent of the time. You want to have it as closely balanced as possible. That should pay huge dividends for us." Brock said much of the planning, research, coordination and effort to sell the idea in support of the new HPC asset took place behind-the-scenes and included many people from Eglin and AEDC. "There are a number of people that had a huge part in putting this entire proposal together," he said. "I don't know all of the people at AEDC who have been a part of this, but there have been a lot of people working the issues and drafting up the justification, the selling of it and supporting it to the HPC folks. Dr. Kraft has been a big part of that, too. There were a lot of people behind the scenes who weren't here [at the ribbon-cutting ceremony] that deserve a lot of recognition and have been and will continue to be a big part of this effort." Bonnie Hiekkinen, a project manager with ATA's technology and computational fluid dynamics group, is a member of the team that checked out the new HPC to ensure it was ready for users at AEDC and Eglin. "We've been running some check cases, some facility modeling type problems and we've seen a two times increase in speed," she said. "We're running CFD simulating test articles installed in wind tunnel facilities. For the past month, we've just basically been checking out getting our codes ported to the computer system, making sure the codes are running right. We've been given the approval to go to production use for it now. "All the users on base have applied for accounts," she continued. "All of our CFD folks are getting their codes ported and anxious to get on and start running on it." The codes she is referring to are CFD codes. "Every time you go to a new computer platform the commands that you do to compile the software and to make it run in parallel are a little bit different," she explained.