:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/metroworldnews/A3RKF6DNQRCOZPRNNDWE3D2UYM.jpg "The true meaning of the phrase “you have a NASA PC”: this is how space agency computers are")
How many times have you told a friend that has a NASA PC? It is a colloquial and universal phrase, used to refer to someone having a powerful computerBut we’ve probably never understood what that really means, because the computers in the US space agency are extremely powerful.
To compare the powers, it must be taken into account that the computers we have at home are for studying, working, using entertainment programs or playing games. Making a comparison with the Apollo Guidance Computer, key to the arrival of man on the Moon, running video games at 4K is insignificant.
Taking it to the present, as explained in the report published on the website of hardzoneNASA computers are summarized in huge mainframes or data servers, high performance systems and advanced workstations.
What should a NASA PC have?
For the different tasks of NASA, space experts require much more power than a conventional PC. need a device capable of performing the same instruction with several different operands at the same time and in parallel at high speeda feature that was ported to computers in the mid-1990s.
Over time, computers at the space agency were upgraded with very powerful graphics cards. Computers basically have the same components as the PC on your desk, but they use gadgets and parts that you can’t find at the corner store.
Some of the specifications that a NASA computer may have are 2.25 Ghz Intel Xeon Gold DP processor, 4 E-Cells, 1,152 nodes, 16 GB DDR4 RAM (2Rx4) and 4.8 GB memory per core or 192 GB per node. Crazy.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/metroworldnews/Y5DT4Y5PSNDFHJHZABLZKQGVBI.jpg "The true meaning of the phrase \"you have a NASA PC\": this is how space agency computers are")
Also, the theoretical computing power is 13.12 PFLOPS and ratio of 9.07 PFLOPS on LINPACK, placing it in the middle of the world’s 100 most powerful supercomputers according to the top 500 list.
Professional Review shared other features that a NASA PC can have, as 308,224 cores in total, a total installed main memory of 1.27 PB, storage of 221 TBGigabit Ethernet network interconnections, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system, among others.
