US airforce uses 128-processor Origin 2000 to run large rotocraft stealth calculationsMountain View 04 August 2000 Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation is to develop the U.S. Army's new RAH-66 Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter on an SGI Origion 2000. Sikorsky's Origin 2000 server-based solution makes it possible for Sikorsky to run larger stealth aircraft design calculations than ever before. The 128-processor Origin 2000 server, which includes 32GB of memory and 2TB of disk storage, was installed in February 2000.
The RAH-66 Comanche, the U.S. Army's 21st century combat helicopter, is being
developed by U.S. Army Aviation and a team of leading aerospace companies
headed by Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation and The Boeing Company. Sikorsky is
using the SGI system primarily for survivability design for the Comanche, with
emphasis on electromagnetics and other signature-related properties of stealth
aircraft.
Radar cross section (RCS) helicopter simulations are at least a thousand times
more time consuming than those for fixed-wing aircraft, partly because the
rotating blades, both the main rotor and the tail rotor, must be modeled in
thousands of positions. Sikorsky is running in-house-developed codes to create
low RCS models for the Comanche. During Sikorsky's vendor selection period,
five competing vendors were given the opportunity to optimize these codes for
their platforms.
In April 2000, the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche program won approval from
the Department of Defense to begin its $3.1 billion Engineering and
Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase. The U.S. Army Aviation Modernization
Plan has recommended acquisition of more than 1,200 Comanche helicopters valued
at nearly $34 billion over the program's production cycle. The first U.S. Army
Comanche unit will be equipped in 2006.
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