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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 559 records · Page 31
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1972

VISCEL: A general-purpose computer program for analysis of linear viscoelastic structures (user's manual), volume 1

This program, an extension of the linear equilibrium problem solver ELAS, is an updated and extended version of its earlier form (written in FORTRAN 2 for the IBM 7094 computer). A synchronized material property concept utilizing incremental time steps and the finite element matrix displacement approach has been adopted for the current analysis. A special option enables employment of constant time steps in the logarithmic scale, thereby reducing computational efforts resulting from accumulative material memory effects. A wide variety of structures with elastic or viscoelastic material properties can be analyzed by VISCEL. The program is written in FORTRAN 5 language for the Univac 1108 computer operating under the EXEC 8 system. Dynamic storage allocation is automatically effected by the program, and the user may request up to 195K core memory in a 260K Univac 1108/EXEC 8 machine. The physical program VISCEL, consisting of about 7200 instructions, has four distinct links (segments), and the compiled program occupies a maximum of about 11700 words decimal of core storage.

Gupta, K. K.↗
NASA NTRS2011

A Novel Automated Method for Analyzing Cylindrical Computed Tomography Data

A novel software method is presented that is applicable for analyzing cylindrical and partially cylindrical objects inspected using computed tomography. This method involves unwrapping and re-slicing data so that the CT data from the cylindrical object can be viewed as a series of 2-D sheets in the vertical direction in addition to volume rendering and normal plane views provided by traditional CT software. The method is based on interior and exterior surface edge detection and under proper conditions, is FULLY AUTOMATED and requires no input from the user except the correct voxel dimension from the CT scan. The software is available from NASA in 32- and 64-bit versions that can be applied to gigabyte-sized data sets, processing data either in random access memory or primarily on the computer hard drive. Please inquire with the presenting author if further interested. This software differentiates itself in total from other possible re-slicing software solutions due to complete automation and advanced processing and analysis capabilities.

Roth, D. J.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Simplified Night Sky Display System

A document describes a simple night sky display system that is portable, lightweight, and includes, at most, four components in its simplest configuration. The total volume of this system is no more than 10(sup 6) cm(sup 3) in a disassembled state, and weighs no more than 20 kilograms. The four basic components are a computer, a projector, a spherical light-reflecting first surface and mount, and a spherical second surface for display. The computer has temporary or permanent memory that contains at least one signal representing one or more images of a portion of the sky when viewed from an arbitrary position, and at a selected time. The first surface reflector is spherical and receives and reflects the image from the projector onto the second surface, which is shaped like a hemisphere. This system may be used to simulate selected portions of the night sky, preserving the appearance and kinesthetic sense of the celestial sphere surrounding the Earth or any other point in space. These points will then show motions of planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae, and comets that are visible from that position. The images may be motionless, or move with the passage of time. The array of images presented, and vantage points in space, are limited only by the computer software that is available, or can be developed. An optional approach is to have the screen (second surface) self-inflate by means of gas within the enclosed volume, and then self-regulate that gas in order to support itself without any other mechanical support.

Castellano, Timothy P.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Staging memory for massively parallel processor

The invention herein relates to a computer organization capable of rapidly processing extremely large volumes of data. A staging memory is provided having a main stager portion consisting of a large number of memory banks which are accessed in parallel to receive, store, and transfer data words simultaneous with each other. Substager portions interconnect with the main stager portion to match input and output data formats with the data format of the main stager portion. An address generator is coded for accessing the data banks for receiving or transferring the appropriate words. Input and output permutation networks arrange the lineal order of data into and out of the memory banks.

Batcher, Kenneth E.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Main memory unit

The development of a main memory unit (MMU) for the space ultrareliable module computer (SUMC) model HTC is discussed. The design, fabrication, and test of basic memory modules (BMM) which were to be used in the design and construction of the MMU are described. The BMM was designed from state-of-the-art technologies which included large scale integration devices mounted and interconnected on a substrate to form a functional module to be utilized in the MMU development. A SUMC memory system design study is discussed which addressed itself to the BMM design and analysis to be conducted to determine the most efficient organization of the BMM in order to establish such modularity features as: word length expandability without redesign, high reliability, and fault tolerance. One MMU was designed, fabricated, tested, and delivered which will be electrical and mechanically compatible with the hybrid technology computer (HTC) model of the SUMC family of computers. The MMU will contain a storage capacity of 8196 36 bit words which includes a parity bit for each 8 bit byte of data.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1997

Efficient Calculation of a Jitter/Stability Metric

A tool for computing a jitter/stability metric used in NASA requirements statements is developed. An efficient algorithm is given for computing this metric. Two ways of implementing it on a computer are discussed. One is optimized for computational speed while the other sacrifices some speed to conserve memory. Timing studies are given to show that the improvement of computation times using the present algorithm over previously existing techniques can run to several orders of magnitude, and that previous techniques were so costly that the present algorithm represents enabling technology. Further comparisons show that the memory conservative implementation runs at about half the speed of the fast implementation, but can cut the major data storage requirement of the fast implementation by 95-99%, making the algorithm implementable on much smaller computers, such as PC's, than it would be otherwise. Software for both implementations is included in version 2 of the NASA time and frequency domain analysis program PLATSIM.

Giesy, Daniel P.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NOR Flash Memory Scrubbing Application for Boot File Preservation of NASA’s Descent and Landing Computer (DLC)

Progress on NASA’s Safe and Precise Landing Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) project continues, specifically with this development of the Descent and Landing Computer (DLC). One of the DLC’s primary contributions as a SPLICE technology is its implementation of algorithms and operation of sensors to autonomously guide a spacecraft in performing more precise and safer landings on celestial bodies such as the Moon and Mars [1]. The second iteration of the DLC is known as the Engineering Test Unit (ETU) and one of its desired functionalities is the ability to preserve the fidelity of the system’s boot file through the use of memory scrubbing [2]. The ETU has two primary boards, one for housing a Multi-Processor System on a Chip (MPSoC) and the other for housing a Xilinx Kintex Ultrascale FPGA*. To emulate a memory scrubbing function implemented on the ETU’s FPGA board, the design and testing of a software application was performed on a Xilinx KCU105 FPGA evaluation board. The memory scrubbing application had to meet certain key criteria such as (1) properly utilize with the flash memory’s Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) to read, write, and erase flash memory properly, (2) be able to detect arbitrarily large or small amounts of bit-errors, (3) be able to correct all detected errors, and (4) perform memory scrubbing indefinitely and autonomously. A prototype implementation was constructed and tested, demonstrating successful detection and correction of bit errors in multiple configurations. In the form of burst errors or singular bit flips, and in amounts of errors ranging from one to fifteen (per 256 Bytes), the application was successful in preserving memory fidelity.

Flash memory↗
NASA NTRS1997

Out-of-Core Streamline Visualization on Large Unstructured Meshes

It's advantageous for computational scientists to have the capability to perform interactive visualization on their desktop workstations. For data on large unstructured meshes, this capability is not generally available. In particular, particle tracing on unstructured grids can result in a high percentage of non-contiguous memory accesses and therefore may perform very poorly with virtual memory paging schemes. The alternative of visualizing a lower resolution of the data degrades the original high-resolution calculations. This paper presents an out-of-core approach for interactive streamline construction on large unstructured tetrahedral meshes containing millions of elements. The out-of-core algorithm uses an octree to partition and restructure the raw data into subsets stored into disk files for fast data retrieval. A memory management policy tailored to the streamline calculations is used such that during the streamline construction only a very small amount of data are brought into the main memory on demand. By carefully scheduling computation and data fetching, the overhead of reading data from the disk is significantly reduced and good memory performance results. This out-of-core algorithm makes possible interactive streamline visualization of large unstructured-grid data sets on a single mid-range workstation with relatively low main-memory capacity: 5-20 megabytes. Our test results also show that this approach is much more efficient than relying on virtual memory and operating system's paging algorithms.

Ueng, Shyh-Kuang↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Performance Optimization Methods for a Memory-Bound, Unstructured-Grid CFD Application on Massively Parallel GPU Platforms

Computational performance of the FUN3D unstructured-grid computational fluid dynamics (CFD) application on massively parallel GPU environments is memory-bound and highly dependent upon efficient reads from and atomic updates to the irregular cell-, edge-, and node-based data structures. In this talk, we present recent efforts into optimizing select performance-critical kernels on NVIDIA Tesla V100 and A100 GPUs and AMD CDNA MI100 GPUs. A novel use of L2 cache residency controls and asynchronous loads into on-chip shared memory are explored on the A100 GPU for the sparse iterative solver, which is dominated by mixed-precision, sparse matrix vector multiplication. Demonstrations show that these methods improve global memory bandwidth utilization by 13.5% on the A100 GPU. Several techniques are also presented that use registers and/or shared memory to facilitate array transposition and aggregation which combine to reduce the frequency and increase the cache efficiency of floating-point atomic updates to the irregular data structures. These methods are demonstrated to improve the kernel throughput by nearly 500% on select kernels on the AMD MI100 over atomic updates directly to global memory. Overall, both V100 and A100 GPUs outperformed the MI100 GPU on kernels dominated by double-precision atomic updates; however, the techniques demonstrated here reduced the performance gap and improved the MI100 performance.

GPU CPU unstructured CFD memory↗
NASA NTRS1979

TMS communications hardware. Volume 1: Computer interfaces

A prototpye coaxial cable bus communications system was designed to be used in the Trend Monitoring System (TMS) to connect intelligent graphics terminals (based around a Data General NOVA/3 computer) to a MODCOMP IV host minicomputer. The direct memory access (DMA) interfaces which were utilized for each of these computers are identified. It is shown that for the MODCOMP, an off-the-shell board was suitable, while for the NOVAs, custon interface circuitry was designed and implemented.

Brown, J. S.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Architecture Adaptive Computing Environment

Architecture Adaptive Computing Environment (aCe) is a software system that includes a language, compiler, and run-time library for parallel computing. aCe was developed to enable programmers to write programs, more easily than was previously possible, for a variety of parallel computing architectures. Heretofore, it has been perceived to be difficult to write parallel programs for parallel computers and more difficult to port the programs to different parallel computing architectures. In contrast, aCe is supportable on all high-performance computing architectures. Currently, it is supported on LINUX clusters. aCe uses parallel programming constructs that facilitate writing of parallel programs. Such constructs were used in single-instruction/multiple-data (SIMD) programming languages of the 1980s, including Parallel Pascal, Parallel Forth, C*, *LISP, and MasPar MPL. In aCe, these constructs are extended and implemented for both SIMD and multiple- instruction/multiple-data (MIMD) architectures. Two new constructs incorporated in aCe are those of (1) scalar and virtual variables and (2) pre-computed paths. The scalar-and-virtual-variables construct increases flexibility in optimizing memory utilization in various architectures. The pre-computed-paths construct enables the compiler to pre-compute part of a communication operation once, rather than computing it every time the communication operation is performed.

Dorband, John E.↗
NASA NTRS1974

MICTPT - A minicomputer general-purpose microwave two-port analysis program

The implementation of a microwave network-analysis program for computers with 4K words of memory is described. The program is capable of the frequency analysis of networks which include interconnections of lumped elements, transmission lines, waveguides, and any two-port which is described by the elements of a scattering matrix. The network can be described mnemonically rather than by numerical codes. For each frequency in the range, the entire network is collapsed into a single equivalent A matrix, and the input impedance and other characteristics are calculated.

Olson, D. H.↗
NASA NTRS1975

An interactive method for digitizing zone maps

A method is presented for digitizing maps that consist of zones, such as contour or climatic zone maps. A color-coded map is prepared by any convenient process. The map is then read into memory of an Image 100 computer by means of its table scanner, using colored filters. Zones are separated and stored in themes, using standard classification procedures. Thematic data are written on magnetic tape and these data, appropriately coded, are combined to make a digitized image on tape. Step-by-step procedures are given for digitization of crop moisture index maps with this procedure. In addition, a complete example of the digitization of a climatic zone map is given.

Giddings, L. E.↗
NASA NTRS1979

Radar image processing of real aperture SLAR data for the detection and identification of iceberg and ship targets

An iceberg detection and identification system consisting of a moderate resolution Side Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR) interfaced with a Radar Image Processor (RIP) based on a ROLM 1664 computer with a 32K core memory updatable to 64K is described. The system can be operated in high- or low-resolution sampling modes. Specifically designed algorithms are applied to digitized signal returns to provide automatic target detection and location, geometrically correct video image display and data recording. The real aperture Motorola AN/APS-94D SLAR operates in the X-band and is tunable between 9.10 and 9.40 GHz; its output power is 45 kW peak with a pulse repetition rate of 750 pulses per hour. Schematic diagrams of the system are provided, together with preliminary test data.

Marthaler, J. G.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Complete viscous flowfield solutions about a blunt parabolic body in a supersonic stream

A hybrid computational technique which splits the flowfield into inviscid and viscous regions is used to investigate the complete flowfield about axisymmetric parabolic blunt bodies in a supersonic stream. The solutions are carried out on the CDC CYBER-203 computer which, with its extensive memory, allows for the use of a large number of finite-difference mesh points, allowing resolution of important flowfield features. A range of freestream Mach number of 2-5 and a range of Re number based on nose radius of 500-125,000 was run for a sonic corner body. Contour plots of density, pressure, and Mach number, velocity vector plots, and surface distributions of pressure, heat transfer, and shear stress are presented. Also, correlations of the downstream extent of the base recirculation region with Re number based on nose radius are given.

Weilmuenster, K. J.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Advanced CO2 removal process control and monitor instrumentation development

A progam to evaluate, design and demonstrate major advances in control and monitor instrumentation was undertaken. A carbon dioxide removal process, one whose maturity level makes it a prime candidate for early flight demonstration was investigated. The instrumentation design incorporates features which are compatible with anticipated flight requirements. Current electronics technology and projected advances are included. In addition, the program established commonality of components for all advanced life support subsystems. It was concluded from the studies and design activities conducted under this program that the next generation of instrumentation will be greatly smaller than the prior one. Not only physical size but weight, power and heat rejection requirements were reduced in the range of 80 to 85% from the former level of research and development instrumentation. Using a microprocessor based computer, a standard computer bus structure and nonvolatile memory, improved fabrication techniques and aerospace packaging this instrumentation will greatly enhance overall reliability and total system availability.

Heppner, D. B.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Digital imaging techniques in experimental stress analysis

Digital imaging techniques are utilized as a measure of surface displacement components in laser speckle metrology. An image scanner which is interfaced to a computer records and stores in memory the laser speckle patterns of an object in a reference and deformed configuration. Subsets of the deformed images are numerically correlated with the references as a measure of surface displacements. Discrete values are determined around a closed contour for plane problems which then become input into a boundary integral equation method in order to calculate surface traction in the contour. Stresses are then calculated within this boundary. The solution procedure is illustrated by a numerical example of a case of uniform tension.

Peters, W. H.↗