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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 541 records · Page 30

Hybrid automated reliability predictor integrated work station (HiREL)

The Hybrid Automated Reliability Predictor (HARP) integrated reliability (HiREL) workstation tool system marks another step toward the goal of producing a totally integrated computer aided design (CAD) workstation design capability. Since a reliability engineer must generally graphically represent a reliability model before he can solve it, the use of a graphical input description language increases productivity and decreases the incidence of error. The captured image displayed on a cathode ray tube (CRT) screen serves as a documented copy of the model and provides the data for automatic input to the HARP reliability model solver. The introduction of dependency gates to a fault tree notation allows the modeling of very large fault tolerant system models using a concise and visually recognizable and familiar graphical language. In addition to aiding in the validation of the reliability model, the concise graphical representation presents company management, regulatory agencies, and company customers a means of expressing a complex model that is readily understandable. The graphical postprocessor computer program HARPO (HARP Output) makes it possible for reliability engineers to quickly analyze huge amounts of reliability/availability data to observe trends due to exploratory design changes.

Bavuso, Salvatore J.↗

Flow visualization of CFD using graphics workstations

High performance graphics workstations are used to visualize the fluid flow dynamics obtained from supercomputer solutions of computational fluid dynamic programs. The visualizations can be done independently on the workstation or while the workstation is connected to the supercomputer in a distributed computing mode. In the distributed mode, the supercomputer interactively performs the computationally intensive graphics rendering tasks while the workstation performs the viewing tasks. A major advantage of the workstations is that the viewers can interactively change their viewing position while watching the dynamics of the flow fields. An overview of the computer hardware and software required to create these displays is presented. For complex scenes the workstation cannot create the displays fast enough for good motion analysis. For these cases, the animation sequences are recorded on video tape or 16 mm film a frame at a time and played back at the desired speed. The additional software and hardware required to create these video tapes or 16 mm movies are also described. Photographs illustrating current visualization techniques are discussed. Examples of the use of the workstations for flow visualization through animation are available on video tape.

Lasinski, Thomas↗

On the role of minicomputers in structural design

Results are presented of exploratory studies on the use of a minicomputer in conjunction with large-scale computers to perform structural design tasks, including data and program management, use of interactive graphics, and computations for structural analysis and design. An assessment is made of minicomputer use for the structural model definition and checking and for interpreting results. Included are results of computational experiments demonstrating the advantages of using both a minicomputer and a large computer to solve a large aircraft structural design problem.

Storaasli, O. O.↗

PC Software graphics tool for conceptual design of space/planetary electrical power systems

This paper describes the Decision Support System (DSS), a personal computer software graphics tool for designing conceptual space and/or planetary electrical power systems. By using the DSS, users can obtain desirable system design and operating parameters, such as system weight, electrical distribution efficiency, and bus power. With this tool, a large-scale specific power system was designed in a matter of days. It is an excellent tool to help designers make tradeoffs between system components, hardware architectures, and operation parameters in the early stages of the design cycle. The DSS is a user-friendly, menu-driven tool with online help and a custom graphical user interface. An example design and results are illustrated for a typical space power system with multiple types of power sources, frequencies, energy storage systems, and loads.

Truong, Long V.↗

Computer systems and methods for the query and visualization of multidimensional databases

In response to a user request, a computer generates a graphical user interface on a computer display. A schema information region of the graphical user interface includes multiple operand names, each operand name associated with one or more fields of a multi-dimensional database. A data visualization region of the graphical user interface includes multiple shelves. Upon detecting a user selection of the operand names and a user request to associate each user-selected operand name with a respective shelf in the data visualization region, the computer generates a visual table in the data visualization region in accordance with the associations between the operand names and the corresponding shelves. The visual table includes a plurality of panes, each pane having at least one axis defined based on data for the fields associated with a respective operand name.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Computer systems and methods for the query and visualization of multidimensional databases

In response to a user request, a computer generates a graphical user interface on a computer display. A schema information region of the graphical user interface includes multiple operand names, each operand name associated with one or more fields of a multi-dimensional database. A data visualization region of the graphical user interface includes multiple shelves. Upon detecting a user selection of the operand names and a user request to associate each user-selected operand name with a respective shelf in the data visualization region, the computer generates a visual table in the data visualization region in accordance with the associations between the operand names and the corresponding shelves. The visual table includes a plurality of panes, each pane having at least one axis defined based on data for the fields associated with a respective operand name.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A Latency-Tolerant Partitioner for Distributed Computing on the Information Power Grid

NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG) is an infrastructure designed to harness the power of graphically distributed computers, databases, and human expertise, in order to solve large-scale realistic computational problems. This type of a meta-computing environment is necessary to present a unified virtual machine to application developers that hides the intricacies of a highly heterogeneous environment and yet maintains adequate security. In this paper, we present a novel partitioning scheme. called MinEX, that dynamically balances processor workloads while minimizing data movement and runtime communication, for applications that are executed in a parallel distributed fashion on the IPG. We also analyze the conditions that are required for the IPG to be an effective tool for such distributed computations. Our results show that MinEX is a viable load balancer provided the nodes of the IPG are connected by a high-speed asynchronous interconnection network.

Das, Sajal K.↗

Multimodal neuroelectric interface development

We are developing electromyographic and electroencephalographic methods, which draw control signals for human-computer interfaces from the human nervous system. We have made progress in four areas: 1) real-time pattern recognition algorithms for decoding sequences of forearm muscle activity associated with control gestures; 2) signal-processing strategies for computer interfaces using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals; 3) a flexible computation framework for neuroelectric interface research; and d) noncontact sensors, which measure electromyogram or EEG signals without resistive contact to the body.

Evaluation Studies↗

The Tradeoffs of Fused Memory Hierarchies in Heterogeneous Computing Architectures

With the rise of general purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), the influence from consumer markets can now be seen across the spectrum of computer architectures. In fact, many of the high-ranking Top500 HPC systems now include these accelerators. Traditionally, GPUs have connected to the CPU via the PCIe bus, which has proved to be a significant bottleneck for scalable scientific applications. Now, a trend toward tighter integration between CPU and GPU has removed this bottleneck and unified the memory hierarchy for both CPU and GPU cores. We examine the impact of this trend for high performance scientific computing by investigating AMD's new Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) as a testbed. In particular, we evaluate the tradeoffs in performance, power consumption, and programmability when comparing this unified memory hierarchy with similar, but discrete GPUs.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Self-motion perception: assessment by computer-generated animations

The goal of this research is more precise description of adaptation to sensory rearrangements, including microgravity, by development of improved procedures for assessing spatial orientation perception. Thirty-six subjects reported perceived self-motion following exposure to complex inertial-visual motion. Twelve subjects were assigned to each of 3 perceptual reporting procedures: (a) animation movie selection, (b) written report selection and (c) verbal report generation. The question addressed was: do reports produced by these procedures differ with respect to complexity and reliability? Following repeated (within-day and across-day) exposures to 4 different "motion profiles," subjects either (a) selected movies presented on a laptop computer, or (b) selected written descriptions from a booklet, or (c) generated self-motion verbal descriptions that corresponded most closely with their motion experience. One "complexity" and 2 reliability "scores" were calculated. Contrary to expectations, reliability and complexity scores were essentially equivalent for the animation movie selection and written report selection procedures. Verbal report generation subjects exhibited less complexity than did subjects in the other conditions and their reports were often ambiguous. The results suggest that, when selecting from carefully written descriptions and following appropriate training, people may be better able to describe their self-motion experience with words than is usually believed.

Non-NASA Center↗

GPU Accelerated Vector Median Filter

Noise reduction is an important step for most image processing tasks. For three channel color images, a widely used technique is vector median filter in which color values of pixels are treated as 3-component vectors. Vector median filters are computationally expensive; for a window size of n x n, each of the n(sup 2) vectors has to be compared with other n(sup 2) - 1 vectors in distances. General purpose computation on graphics processing units (GPUs) is the paradigm of utilizing high-performance many-core GPU architectures for computation tasks that are normally handled by CPUs. In this work. NVIDIA's Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) paradigm is used to accelerate vector median filtering. which has to the best of our knowledge never been done before. The performance of GPU accelerated vector median filter is compared to that of the CPU and MPI-based versions for different image and window sizes, Initial findings of the study showed 100x improvement of performance of vector median filter implementation on GPUs over CPU implementations and further speed-up is expected after more extensive optimizations of the GPU algorithm .

Aras, Rifat↗

Sirepo for Synchrotron Radiation Workshop

Sirepo is an open source framework for cloud computing. The graphical user interface (GUI) for Sirepo, also known as the client, executes in any HTML5 compliant web browser on any computing platform, including tablets. The client is built in JavaScript, making use of the following open source libraries: Bootstrap, which is fundamental for cross-platform web applications; AngularJS, which provides a model–view–controller (MVC) architecture and GUI components; and D3.js, which provides interactive plots and data-driven transformations. The Sirepo server is built on the following Python technologies: Flask, which is a lightweight framework for web development; Jinja, which is a secure and widely used templating language; and Werkzeug, a utility library that is compliant with the WSGI standard. We use Nginx as the HTTP server and proxy, which provides a scalable event-driven architecture. The physics codes supported by Sirepo execute inside a Docker container. One of the codes supported by Sirepo is the Synchrotron Radiation Workshop (SRW). SRW computes synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons in arbitrary magnetic fields and propagates the radiation wavefronts through optical beamlines. SRW is open source and is primarily supported by Dr. Oleg Chubar of NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Nagler, Robert↗

Sirepo - Warp

Sirepo is an open source framework for cloud computing. The graphical user interface (GUI) for Sirepo, also known as the client, executes in any HTML5 compliant web browser on any computing platform, including tablets. The client is built in JavaScript, making use of the following open source libraries: Bootstrap, which is fundamental for cross-platform web applications; AngularJS, which provides a model–view–controller (MVC) architecture and GUI components; and D3.js, which provides interactive plots and data-driven transformations. The Sirepo server is built on the following Python technologies: Flask, which is a lightweight framework for web development; Jin-ja, which is a secure and widely used templating language; and Werkzeug, a utility library that is compliant with the WSGI standard. We use Nginx as the HTTP server and proxy, which provides a scalable event-driven architecture. The physics codes supported by Sirepo execute inside a Docker container. One of the codes supported by Sirepo is Warp. Warp is a particle-in-cell (PIC) code de-signed to simulate high-intensity charged particle beams and plasmas in both the electrostatic and electromagnetic regimes, with a wide variety of integrated physics models and diagnostics. At pre-sent, Sirepo supports a small subset of Warp’s capabilities. Warp is open source and is part of the Berkeley Lab Accelerator Simulation Toolkit.

Nagler, Robert↗

A computer system to analyze showers in nuclear emulsions: Center Director's discretionary fund report

A system to rapidly digitize data from showers in nuclear emulsions is described. A TV camera views the emulsions though a microscope. The TV output is superimposed on the monitor of a minicomputer. The operator uses the computer's graphics capability to mark the positions of particle tracks. The coordinates of each track are stored on a disk. The computer then predicts the coordinates of each track through successive layers of emulsion. The operator, guided by the predictions, thus tracks and stores the development of the shower. The system provides a significant improvement over purely manual methods of recording shower development in nuclear emulsion stacks.

Meegan, C. A.↗

Sirepo for Synchrotron Radiation Workshop

Sirepo is an open source framework for cloud computing. The graphical user interface (GUI) for Sirepo, also known as the client, executes in any HTML5 compliant web browser on any computing platform, including tablets. The client is built in JavaScript, making use of the following open source libraries: Bootstrap, which is fundamental for cross-platform web applications; AngularJS, which provides a model–view–controller (MVC) architecture and GUI components; and D3.js, which provides interactive plots and data-driven transformations. The Sirepo server is built on the following Python technologies: Flask, which is a lightweight framework for web development; Jinja, which is a secure and widely used templating language; and Werkzeug, a utility library that is compliant with the WSGI standard. We use Nginx as the HTTP server and proxy, which provides a scalable event-driven architecture. The physics codes supported by Sirepo execute inside a Docker container. One of the codes supported by Sirepo is the Synchrotron Radiation Workshop (SRW). SRW computes synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons in arbitrary magnetic fields and propagates the radiation wavefronts through optical beamlines. SRW is open source and is primarily supported by Dr. Oleg Chubar of NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Nagler, Robert↗

Sirepo - Warp

Sirepo is an open source framework for cloud computing. The graphical user interface (GUI) for Sirepo, also known as the client, executes in any HTML5 compliant web browser on any computing platform, including tablets. The client is built in JavaScript, making use of the following open source libraries: Bootstrap, which is fundamental for cross-platform web applications; AngularJS, which provides a model–view–controller (MVC) architecture and GUI components; and D3.js, which provides interactive plots and data-driven transformations. The Sirepo server is built on the following Python technologies: Flask, which is a lightweight framework for web development; Jin-ja, which is a secure and widely used templating language; and Werkzeug, a utility library that is compliant with the WSGI standard. We use Nginx as the HTTP server and proxy, which provides a scalable event-driven architecture. The physics codes supported by Sirepo execute inside a Docker container. One of the codes supported by Sirepo is Warp. Warp is a particle-in-cell (PIC) code de-signed to simulate high-intensity charged particle beams and plasmas in both the electrostatic and electromagnetic regimes, with a wide variety of integrated physics models and diagnostics. At pre-sent, Sirepo supports a small subset of Warp’s capabilities. Warp is open source and is part of the Berkeley Lab Accelerator Simulation Toolkit.

Nagler, Robert↗