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At least 433 records · Page 24

LANL Meteorological Program Self-Assessment 2021 Update

This self-assessment, documented in Table 1, has shown that there has been continued significant progress achieved in meeting the intent of the 21 recommendations from the 2015 DMCC Assist Visit. Every year after the Assist Visit, the LANL Met Program has improved, mainly by addressing the recommendations in the Assist Visit report. The Met Program management should continue to strive to apply its limited resources and seek to acquire additional human capital and physical resources to meet the dynamic needs of its growing sitewide customer base. This includes additional upgrading of the hardware and software elements of the Met Program and implementation of its operational procedures and QAPP to ensure it will consistently meet important present program requirements, as well as anticipated future requirements. These improvements have been summarized in the “present improvements and future initiatives” column in Table 1.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Algorithms and file structures to extend and enhance liquid chromatography and ion mobility mass spectrometry workflows (CRADA Final Report)

The purpose of this project was to continue supporting customizations of algorithms and raw data file structures to enhance software workflows for liquid chromatography (LC), mass spectrometry (MS) and ion mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS)-based protein and metabolite characterization. PNNL worked with Agilent to design, implement, evaluate, and demonstrate new algorithms and integrated them as functionalities into the PNNL-PreProcessor software. The project augmented PNNL’s capabilities to analyze complex proteomics and metabolomics samples. These capabilities are directly beneficial to DOE and PNNL efforts to characterize and analyze these compounds in microbial and plant communities. The project assisted Agilent in further developing improved instrument-software solutions combining liquid chromatography and ion mobility with mass spectrometry for widespread applications in life sciences and other fields.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Planning assistance for the NASA 30/20 GHz program. Network control architecture study.

Network Control Architecture for a 30/20 GHz flight experiment system operating in the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) was studied. Architecture development, identification of processing functions, and performance requirements for the Master Control Station (MCS), diversity trunking stations, and Customer Premises Service (CPS) stations are covered. Preliminary hardware and software processing requirements as well as budgetary cost estimates for the network control system are given. For the trunking system control, areas covered include on board SS-TDMA switch organization, frame structure, acquisition and synchronization, channel assignment, fade detection and adaptive power control, on board oscillator control, and terrestrial network timing. For the CPS control, they include on board processing and adaptive forward error correction control.

Inukai, T.↗

An advanced solid state pressure transducer for high reliability SSME application

New methods to advance the state-of-the-art of pressure sensors for the Space Shuttle Main Engine were demonstrated. The results of the feasibility and breadboard demonstration phase and the current status of the research development prototype follow-on phase are presented. A technology breakthrough utilizing silicon piezoresistive technology was achieved in the first phase. A transducer design concept for the SSME application utilizes packaging materials with similar thermal coefficients of expansion and maintains the transducer seals primarily in compression. The silicon chip design will provide dual sensing outputs with laser trimmable integrated compensating electronics. The silicon resistor ion implant dose was customized for the SSME temperature requirement. A basic acoustic modeling software program was developed to evaluate the frequency response characteristics for the package design.

Johnson, R. L.↗

A class Hierarchical, object-oriented approach to virtual memory management

The Choices family of operating systems exploits class hierarchies and object-oriented programming to facilitate the construction of customized operating systems for shared memory and networked multiprocessors. The software is being used in the Tapestry laboratory to study the performance of algorithms, mechanisms, and policies for parallel systems. Described here are the architectural design and class hierarchy of the Choices virtual memory management system. The software and hardware mechanisms and policies of a virtual memory system implement a memory hierarchy that exploits the trade-off between response times and storage capacities. In Choices, the notion of a memory hierarchy is captured by abstract classes. Concrete subclasses of those abstractions implement a virtual address space, segmentation, paging, physical memory management, secondary storage, and remote (that is, networked) storage. Captured in the notion of a memory hierarchy are classes that represent memory objects. These classes provide a storage mechanism that contains encapsulated data and have methods to read or write the memory object. Each of these classes provides specializations to represent the memory hierarchy.

Russo, Vincent F.↗

Program Aids Simulation Of Neural Networks

Computer program NETS - Tool for Development and Evaluation of Neural Networks - provides simulation of neural-network algorithms plus software environment for development of such algorithms. Enables user to customize patterns of connections between layers of network, and provides features for saving weight values of network, providing for more precise control over learning process. Consists of translating problem into format using input/output pairs, designing network configuration for problem, and finally training network with input/output pairs until acceptable error reached. Written in C.

Baffes, Paul T.↗

Giving E-Commerce a Boost

A former Ames employee, Monte Zweben, founded a new company, Blue Martini Software, that provides software to companies seeking to personalize their products to individual customers. This customer targeting approach is accomplished through the use of artificial intelligence concepts Zweben worked on while at Ames. The Ames AI research has found applications in clickstream mining and purchasing behavior data collection.

Source record↗

The State of NOS3

The NASA Operational Simulator for Small Satellites (NOS3) showcases some of the Jon McBride Software Testing and Research (JSTAR) laboratories technologies on an open-source platform. NOS3 is a software digital twin providing a virtualized platform inside which you have your traditional flight software, ground software, environmental simulators, and middleware to keep all pieces in sync. NOS3 leverages the core Flight System (cFS), OpenC3 COSMOS, and NASA GSFC’s 42 software as the baseline to which additional research technologies can be developed. Current technologies to be demonstrated include NOS3 Igniter, constellation support, NASA JPL’s SYNOPSIS integration, and NASA GSFC’s OnAir. NOS3 Igniter is a GUI in which you can configure, build, and run your simulation. This along with improvements to the documentation and training available open source aims to reduce the ramp up time with new users and improve accessibility. As constellations introduce another level of complexity, it is important to ensure the baseline design reference mission covers all the basics required and allows users to experiment, understand, and test at all levels of the system. The Science Yield improvement via Onboard Prioritization and Summary of Information Systems (SYNOPSIS) is an open-source tool developed by NASA JPL to enable data prioritization and planning. GSFC’s Onboard Artificial Intelligence Research (OnAIR) enables custom algorithm development written in python to interface with the flight software allowing scientists to develop what they need for the next generation of missions and easily interface back to the traditional flight software. During the presentation, a review and demonstration of the above technologies is planned along with a roadmap.

NOS3↗

Capability Enhancements for System-level thermal Hydraulic Modeling of Lead Fast Reactors

This project has focused on the use, assessment, and development of the SAS4A/SASSYS-1 (SAS) safety analysis software. Although SAS was originally intended as a safety analysis tool for Liquid Metal cooled Fast Reactors (LMFRs), which includes both Sodium Fast Reactors (SFRs) and Lead Fast Reactors (LFRs), the vast majority of its recent development and customization has been tailored to SFRs. In general, enhancements that are made to the software for SFRs are applicable to LFRs, however, the fuel composition and corrosive nature of lead requires careful consideration when performing safety analysis of an LFR. In this project an emphasis was placed on closing gaps that are associated with modeling LFRs using SAS. The principal objective of the project was to enhance the ability of SAS as a licensing tool for LFRs. This objective was to be accomplished through three tasks: 1) Enhance the ability of SAS to couple with external software; 2) Improve the underlying physics models in SAS, with priority given to models that are highly relevant to LFRs; 3) Extend the Verification and Validation (V&V) basis of the software

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

An evaluation of the documented requirements of the SSP UIL and a review of commercial software packages for the development and testing of UIL prototypes

A review was conducted of software packages currently on the market which might be integrated with the interface language and aid in reaching the objectives of customization, standardization, transparency, reliability, maintainability, language substitutions, expandability, portability, and flexibility. Recommendations are given for best choices in hardware and software acquisition for inhouse testing of these possible integrations. Software acquisition in the line of tools to aid expert-system development and/or novice program development, artificial intelligent voice technology and touch screen or joystick or mouse utilization as well as networking were recommended. Other recommendations concerned using the language Ada for the user interface language shell because of its high level of standardization, structure, and ability to accept and execute programs written in other programming languages, its DOD ownership and control, and keeping the user interface language simple so that multiples of users will find the commercialization of space within their realm of possibility which is, after all, the purpose of the Space Station.

Gill, Esther Naomi↗

Visualization software for a global three-dimensional upper atmosphere model

A software environment has been developed to assist in analysis and visualization of numerical outputs from NCAR's thermospheric general circulation models. The codes produce vector graphics, raster imagery, and time dependent animation of model results, with provision for comparison with empirical models and relevant data from satellite and ground based instruments. Separate programs are executed on the NCAR CRAY YMP8/864 and HAO divisional Sun workstations, providing both large volume highspeed batch and custom interactive computing environments. The visualization system assembles a suite of existing software packages including NCAR Graphics, IDL, netCDF, and the Xt intrinsics library with the Athena widget set.

Foster, Benjamin T.↗

A Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed for Spacecraft Formation Flying Applications

The Formation Flying Test Bed (FFTB) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is being developed as a modular, hybrid dynamic simulation facility employed for end-to-end guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) analysis and design for formation flying clusters and constellations of satellites. The FFTB will support critical hardware and software technology development to enable current and future missions for NASA, other government agencies, and external customers for a wide range of missions, particularly those involving distributed spacecraft operations. The initial capabilities of the FFTB are based upon an integration of high fidelity hardware and software simulation, emulation, and test platforms developed at GSFC in recent years; including a high-fidelity GPS simulator which has been a fundamental component of the Guidance, Navigation, and Control Center's GPS Test Facility. The FFTB will be continuously evolving over the next several years from a too[ with initial capabilities in GPS navigation hardware/software- in-the- loop analysis and closed loop GPS-based orbit control algorithm assessment to one with cross-link communications and relative navigation analysis and simulation capability. Eventually the FFT13 will provide full capability to support all aspects of multi-sensor, absolute and relative position determination and control, in all (attitude and orbit) degrees of freedom, as well as information management for satellite clusters and constellations. In this paper we focus on the architecture for the FFT13 as a general GN&C analysis environment for the spacecraft formation flying community inside and outside of NASA GSFC and we briefly reference some current and future activities which will drive the requirements and development.

Leitner, Jesse↗

Master Console, SMC

The Master Console oversees the function of Computer Systems in Firing room 1 (FR1). Master Console Operators, MCOs' for short, are our customer. I was integrated into the System Monitoring and Control (SMC) software team that is under the guidance of David Slaiman, who is the product group lead. I have been brought up to speed with System Monitoring and Control. The initial time spent reading SMC software design description and understanding how it works. The current Firing Room 1 Console Display is a floor layout giving the MCO two essential pieces of information which are Health and Status. When an issue arises, the MCO has to look on the display to find which console is affected and then the MCO must use the Reference designator from the display to manually search for the Portal Workstation (PWS) installed in the console using the hardware map; which is a long process to lookup a PWS if an issue is present. My project is to make the FR1 Console Display easier for the MCO's to pinpoint PWS's without having to lookup additional resources in the process. My project also includes updating Firing Room 1 Console Display to include the F1R Non-Redundant Set. The display does not have good use of space and functionality. PWS numbers were not present in the previous design and are the critical component in efficient understanding and administration of the consoles. Part of the process includes getting feedback from the customer, instead of just emailing them with a question, we made a proposal with changes so they could respond and give us their input; which proved to be an effective method for engaging them. In order to do this I had to use the Display Editor (DE) tool developed by NASA, Paint.Net and Visio. The process I have been using has been Visio to alter the floor layout of Firing Room and take advantage of the white areas, and then I take the altered floor plan into Paint.Net. Once in Paint.Net I put the new floor plan as a background to the standard console display. Paint.Net also serves as a tool to create the new service state bars for the new background; finally I used the DE to assemble everything and setup the right CUI's for each PWS.

MCO↗

Customizing graphical user interface technology for spacecraft control centers

The Transportable Payload Operations Control Center (TPOCC) project is applying the latest in graphical user interface technology to the spacecraft control center environment. This project of the Mission Operations Division's (MOD) Control Center Systems Branch (CCSB) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed an architecture for control centers which makes use of a distributed processing approach and the latest in Unix workstation technology. The TPOCC project is committed to following industry standards and using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software components wherever possible to reduce development costs and to improve operational support. TPOCC's most successful use of commercial software products and standards has been in the development of its graphical user interface. This paper describes TPOCC's successful use and customization of four separate layers of commercial software products to create a flexible and powerful user interface that is uniquely suited to spacecraft monitoring and control.

Beach, Edward↗

Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Grid (RIAPS)

A number of emerging trends will substantially alter the operation and control of the electric grid over the next several decades. These trends include ensuring resiliency under severe weather events, increasing integration of renewable electricity generation, supporting changing electricity demand patterns, and the improving cost effectiveness of distributed energy resources. To address these challenges, the future “Smart Grid” management will need to transition from centralized to coordinated distributed control paradigm. Reliable operation of the Smart Grid depends on distributed intelligence realized through software applications that run on distributed computing devices attached to the power system to collect data and collaboratively manage resources. However, much of the existing software for Smart Grid-enabled devices is either proprietary or developed with custom solutions, which limits interoperability among the heterogeneous devices and hinders the ability to manage system-level reliability, security, and resiliency requirements. Additionally, this approach makes Smart Grid applications hard to maintain, evolve, verify, and replace; resulting in high development and deployment costs. Further development of the Smart Grid requires a reusable software base-layer to move from hard-coded functionality to a plug-and-play architecture capable of managing system-level objectives and constraints in addition to providing consistent common services across heterogeneous devices and applications. Vanderbilt University, in collaboration with North Carolina State University and Washington State University has developed a foundation ‘software platform’ for developing and deploying robust, reliable, effective and secure software applications for the Smart Grid. The Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid (RIAPS) provides core services for building effective and powerful smart grid applications. It offers unique services for real-time data dissemination, fault tolerance, and coordination across apps distributed over the network.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Technology Transfer Challenges for High-Assurance Software Engineering Tools

In this paper, we describe our experience with the challenges thar we are currently facing in our effort to develop advanced software verification and validation tools. We categorize these challenges into several areas: cost benefits modeling, tool usability, customer application domain, and organizational issues. We provide examples of challenges in each area and identrfj, open research issues in areas which limit our ability to transfer high-assurance software engineering tools into practice.

John Penix↗

FPGA Acceleration of GCN in Light of the Symmetry of Graph Adjacency Matrix

Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (GCNs) are widely used to process large-scale graph data. Different from deep neural networks (DNNs), GCNs are sparse, irregular, and unstructured, posing unique challenges to hardware acceleration with regular processing elements (PEs). In particular, the adjacency matrix of a GCN is extremely sparse, leading to frequent but irregular memory access, low spatial/temporal data locality and poor data reuse. Furthermore, a realistic graph usually consists of unstructured data (e.g., unbalanced distributions), creating significantly different processing times and imbalanced workload for each node in GCN acceleration. To overcome these challenges, we propose an end-to-end hardware-software co-design to accelerate GCNs on resource-constrained FPGAs with the features including: (1) A custom dataflow that leverages symmetry along the diagonal of the adjacency matrix to accelerate feature aggregation for undirected graphs. We utilize either the upper or the lower triangular matrix of the adjacency matrix to perform aggregation in GCN to improve data reuse. (2) Unified compute cores for both aggregation and transform phases, with full support to the symmetry-based dataflow. These cores can be dynamically reconfigured to the systolic mode for transformation or as individual accumulators for aggregation in GCN processing. (3) Preprocessing of the graph in software to rearrange the edges and features to match the custom dataflow. This step improves the regularity in memory access and data reuse in the aggregation phase. Moreover, we quantize the GCN precision from FP32 to INT8 to reduce the memory footprint without losing the inference accuracy. We implement our accelerator design in Intel Stratix10 MX FPGA board with HBM2, and demonstrate 1.3x-110.5x improvement in end-to-end GCN latency as compared to the state-of the-art FPGA implementations, on the graph datasets of Cora, Pubmed, Citeseer and Reddit.

Nair, Gopikrishnan R.↗