FLARE
Formal Linear Algebra Recovery Environment
John Gunnels (UT-Austin)
Daniel Katz (JPL)
Enrique Quintana-Orti (UJI-Spain)
Robert van de Geijn (UT-Austin)
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Overview
Within NASA's High Performance Computing and Communications
Program, the
Remote Exploration and Experimentation
(REE)
project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
aims to enable a new type of scientific investigation by taking
commercial supercomputing technology into space. Transferring such
computational power to space will enable highly-autonomous, flexible
missions with substantial on-board analysis capability, mitigating
control latency issues due to fundamental light-time delays, as well as
inevitable bandwidth limitations in the link between spacecraft and
ground stations. To do this, REE does not intend to develop a new
computational platform, but rather to define and demonstrate a process
for rapidly transferring commercial high-performance computing
technology to ultra-low power, fault-tolerant architectures for
space.
The traditional method for protecting spacecraft components against faults caused by natural galactic cosmic
rays and energetic protons has been radiation-hardening. However, radiation-hardening
lowers the clock speed and may increase the required power of a component.
Even worse, the time needed to design and bring a radiation-hardened component
into production guarantees
that it will be outdated when it is ready for use in space.
Furthermore, it has a high cost which must be spread over a
small number of customers.
Typically, at any given time, radiation-hardened components have
a power:performance ratio that is an order of magnitude lower, and a
cost that is several orders of magnitude higher than
contemporary commodity off-the-shelf (COTS) components.
The REE project is therefore attempting to use COTS components in
space and handling, via software, the faults that will occur.
As part of the Formal Linear Algebra Recovery Environment (FLARE)
project we are pursuing the theory and practice of
providing algorithmic fault--tolerance through
linear algebra libraries.
Related Publications
For related publications, see the FLAME
publication web page.
Related Projects
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This web page is maintained by
Robert van de Geijn
flame@cs.utexas.edu
Last Updated: Dec. 19, 2000