When we think of a supercomputer we usually imagine endless rows of processors performing billions of calculations per second. However, There is another enemy just as important as speed: heat. Every computing operation generates thermal energy, and when hundreds of thousands of processors work simultaneously, keeping them at a safe temperature can consume almost as much electricity as the calculations themselves.
That’s why the NASA’s latest addition It not only stands out for its power, but also for its efficiency. The space agency has presented Athena, su new supercomputer, a system capable of doubling the computing capacity available to its scientists and engineers while the building that houses it reduces electricity consumption by up to 91% intended for cooling compared to a conventional data center. It is an advance that reflects a new philosophy: the future of supercomputing is no longer just about doing more calculations, but about doing them while spending much less energy.
Athena has been installed at the Ames Research Center, in California, and is the most powerful system that NASA has used to date. Its 1,024 nodes, equipped with latest generation AMD EPYC processors, add up to 262,144 CPU corescapable of reaching a power close to 20 petaflops, that is, about twenty thousand billion mathematical operations per second. Although these figures are impressive, the agency insists that what is truly important is what this additional capacity will allow. For decades, the development of a new aircraft or spacecraft followed a relatively slow process: designing a prototype, building it, testing it, and correcting errors. Today that order is changing.
With Athena, engineers will be able to perform much more detailed simulations before manufacturing a single part. From studying how air circulates around a supersonic wing to calculating the behavior of a heat shield during atmospheric reentry or analyze the operation of a rocket engine, many questions can be answered first in the virtual world. Each simulation avoids making unnecessary prototypes and allows you to explore thousands of different designs in much less time. According to NASA, this capability will be key for future lunar missions, trips to Mars, new more efficient aircraft and numerous scientific projects.
To that we must add heat management. A modern supercomputer can dissipate more heat than many office buildings. Without extremely efficient cooling systems, processors would reach damaging temperatures in a matter of seconds. Traditionally, this cooling represents one of the highest energy costs of any computing center. Therefore, NASA decided that Athena not only needed new processors, but also a new way to house them.
The system is located in the Modular Supercomputing Facility, a building specifically designed to minimize energy expenditure. It takes advantage of the relatively cool climate of the San Francisco Bay Area and employs high-efficiency cooling techniques that They allow the electricity used to cool the equipment to be reduced by up to 91% and water consumption reduced by up to 96% compared to a conventional data center.
In both senses, specific power and cost reduction, Athena represents a new trend. Its architecture based on AMD EPYC processors offers a significant performance leap over previous NASA systems, while the data center design prevents much of that energy from becoming wasted heat.
Unlike a new rocket or space telescope, a supercomputer rarely makes big headlines. However, many future missions will depend on machines like Athena. Before a spacecraft takes off toward the Moon or Mars, before an experimental plane makes its first flight, or before a new heat shield passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, It is very likely that it has “flown” thousands of times inside this supercomputer.