Italy's Aerospace Research revitalised using NEC SX-6 at Cira

Musing a little, the inauguration of a supercomputer, an NEC SX-6 with 4 vector processors "per se" is not a unique event, it is rather common, could happen anywhere in the world and unless it is the most powerful in the world, or the most exotic, or built with components that everybody can buy at a corner shop, or powered by solar cells, it is not worth a mention. But if such supercomputer represents a real break-through in the Italian aerospace research, which made it possible to efficiently and effectively design, develop and use some of the most powerful and sophisticated aerospace test facilities in the world, well, then it is a different story.

CIRA has a remarkable tradition in using vector computing. In the early days, its CDC culture - note that a great part of the initial staff came from Aeritalia, a long time user of CDC Cyber computers - led to the installation of an ETA 10, one of the very few in Europe, which as far as we remember, was never in real production because of lack of software and the early demise of the ETA company. Later on, a number of CONVEX "mini-supercomputers" were installed and effectively used.

At that juncture, early nineties, the Italian aeronautics and space activities suffered from substantial stagnation. The dramatic lack of national strategy in this field meant that CIRA was constrained for a long time to using a mid-range super-scalar server, for computational resources. As a consequence, CIRA's staff, which numbers 270 today, with over 50% graduates in Aeronautics, Physics, Electronics, Mathematics and Informatics, were, let us say, less than fully motivated. The reason was easy to see, as there were no major research activities, no leading-edge computational facilities, and so on.

The appointment of a new President, in 1999, a Professor in aerospace engineering at the university of Naples, with remarkable managerial skills, was an important milestone in CIRA's history. With an aggressive reorganisation programme, a closer co-ordination with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the other aerospace industries and government bodies, Sergio Vetrella, rapidly brought to CIRA enthusiasm, competence, a new high level of motivation, visibility, as well as national and international recognition. Sergio Vetrella is now also President of ASI and chairman of the board of the EREA Consortium (formerly AEREA), which re-integrates the major European aerospace research centres including the Dutch NLR, the German DLR, the British QINETIQ, the Swedish FOA, the French ONERA, the Spanish INTA, and, of course, CIRA.

The very first step CIRA under Vetrella took, was to identify and acquire a new High Performance Computer. After comparing performances on applications from several well-known and fully qualified vendors, an NEC SX-6 vector parallel supercomputer was selected. Its installation marked a "return to original roots".

As Pasquale Schiano, head of the computational laboratories of CIRA, stated: "Computational fluid-dynamics and vector computing are intrinsically linked to each other, computational kernels in this field of application are mostly and strongly vector oriented." Note that though on a much smaller scale, the NEC SX-6 installed at CIRA is using similar technology as the gigantic supercomputer installed in Japan and known as the "Earth Simulator".

The already intensively used NEC SX-6 computational resource has revitalised Italy's aerospace research. It has been instrumental in bringing into operation the largest and most up-to-date Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT) in the world; ranked second and third are the IRT - NASA Glenn and BRAITT of Boeing Seattle, respectively.

CIRA IWT is specifically designed for simulating extreme icing conditions for turbo-prop airplanes. Some of you may remember that the European ATR, a French-Italian project for Regional Air Transport - many ATR42 and ATR72 are in service today all over the world - suffered two dramatic accidents in its early days of operation, from unusual icing conditions encountered during flight. Because of its capability of simulating proper flight altitudes and large droplets, CIRA IWT is the only facility of its kind, which to the best of our knowledge follows punctually, the FAA directives for anti-ice certification.

Pasquale Schiano went on to say: "Computer simulation on the SX-6 optimises the test schedule...." and he continued: "Tests validate the computational codes, and thus simulation remains a significant part of the process, as not all the conditions can be reproduced inside the tunnel..."

CIRA runs two other record testing facilities, the PWT, Plasma Wind Tunnel for space vehicles re-usability and aerodynamic heating during re-entry, and the Laboratory for Impact Tests on Aerospace Structures, LISA.

According to CIRA staff we talked to: "The availability of an efficient up-to-date supercomputer helps motivation, as it makes them feel that they can perform their research work at the same level-playing-field as those of other aerospace research institutions."

Being "old timers" in High Performance Computing, we remember that in the very early days, some twenty years ago, someone said that: "Supercomputers are for research and academic institutions what libraries were for the old universities. Researchers, professors and students were then attracted by the quality and quantity of scientific, philosophic and literature books, available in the library of one university rather than another". Today's researchers are similarly attracted and motivated by effective and efficient up-to-date computational facilities. Substituting supercomputer facilities for library book collections, we too, fully endorse the above statement.

For further details, you can visit http://www.cira.it.