+ NASA Home + Ames Home + Sitemap + Staff Directory +Home HIGH END SYSTEMS + Pleiades + Columbia + Schirra Columbia Fact Twenty years ago, the most powerful computer at NASA Ames ran at a speed of about 1 gigaflop (one billion calculations per second). The Columbia supercomputer is 50 thousand times faster than that! NASA's most powerful supercomputer, named Columbia to honor the Space Shuttle astronauts, is revitalizing the agency's high-end computing infrastructure and helping make breakthrough scientific discoveries and engineering advances to support agency missions. COLUMBIA SUPERCOMPUTER Technical Description of Columbia Columbia is a 10,240-CPU SGI Altix supercluster, with Intel Itanium 2 processors. + Read More NAS Facility and Columbia News NASA's Columbia supercomputer is producing improved science and engineering advances never before dreamed possible. Along with NAS experts, this powerful system is helping support scientists and engineers in all four of NASA's Mission Directorates. + Read More How Columbia was Built The Columbia supercluster was completed in just over four months in 2004. How did we do it? + Read More Columbia Supercomputer Images High- and low-resolution photos of the Columbia supercomputer. + Get Images + Feedback + Site Help + NASA Privacy Statement, Disclaimer, and Accessibility Certification Editor: Jill Dunbar Webmaster: John Hardman NASA Official: Rupak Biswas + Contact NAS Last Updated: March 31, 2009