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Press release photo
This blur, a UFO as seen through a land-based telescope,
turned out to be an orbiting satellite when processed through
the new supercomputer. Improvements continuing into 2001
will raise the supercomputer's world ranking from being in
the top 100 to among the top 25, according to Eugene Bal,
the director of the Maui High Performance Computing Center.

Maui’s new
supercomputers
to be faster,
more productive

The improvements will let
them faster identify satellites
and UFOs racing toward Earth

---

By Gary Kubota
Maui correspondent

WAILUKU -- Maui's supercomputer is receiving new equipment that will more than quadruple its speed and performance to identify satellites, spacecrafts and unidentified flying objects hurtling towards earth.

Improvements begun in September and continuing into 2001 will raise the supercomputer's world ranking from being in the top 100 to among the top 25, predicted Eugene Bal, the director of the Maui High Performance Computing Center.

The computer, at the center in the Maui Research & Technology Park in Kihei, receives highly classified images from telescopes at the Air Force's space surveillance facilities atop Haleakala.

It then turns blurry images into focused pictures in seconds.

Maui's supercomputer, produced by IBM, played a key role in the space shuttle Discovery's orbit involving astronaut John Glenn in 1999.

NASA was worried the Discovery's tail might have been damaged during liftoff.

IBM officials said Maui's supercomputer was able to examine the rear section and found that tail damage was minor, before the shuttle was allowed to land.

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Press release photo
Here is the image after enhancement by the supercomputer.

The supercomputer has been used to construct photographs of some of the nearly 9,000 objects currently orbiting the planet.

Objects in orbit include a wide variety of satellites, as well as a space glove and a screwdriver inadvertently left behind during previous manned space flight missions.

The IBM Winterhawk, installed in late September, replaces an IBM system that has been in use at the center for three to four years.

"This particular upgrade cuts our processing time in half," said Capt. Brian Beveridge, spokesman for the Air Force's Maui Space Surveillance System.

Beveridge said digital cameras are capable to taking 256 frames a second and require the computer to be able to process thousands of frames to derive an image.

The computations are made to correct jitters in the telescope as well as atmospheric turbulence that might blur the image.

But even more improvements are coming. Bal said in another month the center is going to receive delivery of an IBM Nighthawk that will more than double the current 400-gigaflop speed and performance, with billions of operations per second.

Then in January the center plans to receive the Linux cluster -- with more than 2.2 teraflops, or trillions of operations, a second.

Besides providing services to its primary financial source, the U.S. Department of Defense, the computer also offers its services to private industry and universities.

The center employs 60 people and has been working with Maui schools in developing a computer educational system for students.

Bal said the center has charged a nominal fee to be the Internet server for schools on Maui and offers internships and assistance with high technology projects to students.