The NASA Johnson Space Center has installed an FX/2800 RISC-based supercomputer supplied by Alliant Computer Systems Corp of Littleton, Massachussetts: it will be used to provide real-time data retrieval during space shuttle missions; NASA will be able to access data from current and past Shuttle missions within minutes of request, a process that took several days formerly; the computer will support NASA’s Orbiter Data Reduction Complex, the central repository for data generated during shuttle-missions; Alliant has integrated peripherals and networked the FX/2800 as a file and archive supercomputer server, and it includes 84Gb of storage, a 300Gb Sony WORM disk, StorageTek magnetic tape drives, 12 NCD X terminals and a laser printer; running under Unix, the system supports up to 28 Intel 80860 RISC processors, delivering 2.24 GFLOPS and 1,148 VAX MIPS performance.
