Supercomputing on spacecraft: data processing requirements in the Solar Terrestrial Probe line

M. Rilee, S. Curtis, B. Farrell, A. Figueroa-Vinas, J. Houser, M. Kaiser, and M. Reiner

Presented at Supercomputing '98, 981109-13, Orlando, Fl.

NASA--Remote Exploration and Experimentation

NASA's  Remote Exploration and Experimentation project is
developing a prototype flight computer using scalable
supercomputing technology.  NASA's Solar-Terrestrial Probe
(STP) Line is a series of missions designed to return
information about specific physical phenomena that connect
the dynamics of the Sun to the dynamics of the space
environment throughout the Solar System.

Radio Interferometry

In one modest concept a space-based radiowave interferometric array of
128 spacecraft produces about 6MB of data a second per
observation. Data from each pair of spacecraft must be
crosscorrelated, rudimentary images must be formed, and scientifically
relevant information extracted and sent to Earth. These computations
can require ~30 GFLOPS per observation to meet real-time mission
requirements.

In this poster presentation we will analyze the computational and
communication requirements of prototypical space plasma
applications. We will compare their performance on a high end machine,
the Cray T3E, and a Beowulf class machine, theHIVE, at NASA/GSFC.