The agency still relies on processors rather than graphics cards.
NASA's supercomputers are outdated and need to be replaced, according to an official report found by The Register. This conclusion was reached by auditors who studied the capabilities of the agency’s supercomputer division.
In total, NASA controls five supercomputers with performance ranging from 154 teraflops to 13 petaflops. For comparison: the system that closes the top 10 most productive supercomputers in the world produces 125 petaflops.
Auditors note: NASA supercomputers still rely on processors, not video cards. The agency's supercomputing division has 18,000 processors and only 48 video cards.
It turned out that NASA employees have to wait so long for access to supercomputers that mission teams somehow get their own infrastructure. For example, the Space Launch System team spends $250,000 a year on supercomputing.
Also, NASA supercomputers are considered insufficiently safe: for example, some of them are available to foreign citizens collaborating with the agency. Finally, the auditors found that NASA could not fully modernize its supercomputers.
The auditors made ten recommendations to the agency. For example, NASA executives are being advised to review how the supercomputing division is administered, assess and address cybersecurity threats, and modernize supercomputers and associated code.
According to the report, NASA has agreed to reform its supercomputing division.
This is interesting