Athena Becomes NASA’s Fastest Supercomputer With 20 Quadrillion Calculations Per Second
Housed at NASA’s Modular Supercomputing Facility (within Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley) and just brought fully online this week, Athena has become the agency’s most powerful and energy-efficient computing resource to date, delivering over 20 petaflops of peak performance. Its 20 quadrillion calculations per second surpasses the capabilities of its venerable predecessors, Aitken and Pleiades. Built by Hewlett Packard, the system utilizes 1,024 nodes, each equipped with two 128-core AMD EPYC processors (no word if it's the fourth-gen EPYC Bergamo or the newer fith-gen EPYC Turin).
The activation of Athena is also crucial as NASA prepares for the historic Artemis II mission, the first crewed journey to the lunar vicinity in over fifty years. The supercomputer is being used to run simulations of rocket launches, modeling the intricate physics of the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft. For instance, engineers have leveraged these computational resources to analyze the new metal stakes added to the SLS boosters to smooth out vibrations and turbulence during ascent. By processing wind tunnel data in hours rather than weeks, Athena allows NASA to refine safety protocols and mission designs with unprecedented speed and precision.
Moreso, Athena's substantial hardware allows it to train large-scale AI models on vast scientific datasets, from climate patterns to astrophysical phenomena. Kevin Murphy, NASA’s chief science data officer, noted that “exploration has always driven NASA to the edge of what’s computationally possible." With this new toy, Murphy adds, "NASA will expand its efforts to provide tailored computing resources that meet the evolving needs of its missions."
The name "Athena" was chosen through an internal agency contest, honoring the Greek goddess of wisdom and half-sister of Artemis. This choice reflects the relationship between the digital intelligence of the supercomputer and the bravery of the Artemis astronauts.
With the Artemis II rocket and spacecraft being rolled onto their launchpad plus the mission crew, comprised of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, going into quarantine last week, it looks like NASA is on track to launch in February (or March, at the latest).
