NASA Cancels its High Performance Fast Computing Challenge
herox.com/HPFCC/update/1454Posted Jun 16, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC
14953
herox.com
The reason being given is :
“NASA Cancels its High Performance Fast Computing Challenge
After careful deliberation, NASA has decided to cancel the competition it announced six weeks ago that was designed to solicit the public’s help in speeding up its Pleiades supercomputer software.
Called the High Performance Fast Computing Challenge, the contest was designed to reward qualified contenders who could change the agency’s FUN3D design software so that it could run 10 to 1,000 times faster without a decrease in accuracy.
The extremely high number of applicants, more than 1,800, coupled with the difficulty in satisfying the extensive vetting requirements to control the public distribution of the software made it unlikely we would achieve the challenge’s original objectives in a timely manner.
NASA looked at several alternatives to keep the challenge design intact – things like significantly extending of the challenge performance period, and offering a much smaller portion of the code. Neither were considered viable options.
'We truly appreciate the huge amount of interest shown in this challenge,' said Richard Barhydt, deputy director of NASA’s Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program. 'It shows that people support what we’re doing and wants to get involved.'
At this time, NASA has no plans to reorganize and offer this particular challenge again. However, the agency firmly supports the use of prize challenges to solve difficult problems and engage a broader community in agency activities.”
I think this is all rather unprofessional on their part.
39
I guess they weren't prepared to review a few thousand programs. Not totally sure what they expected.
47
They never shipped the code. They made it seem like they didn't expect this many applicants. Either way, the actual number of eligible applicants who can even receive the code was much lower than the 1800 who applied. This is because of export laws regarding that specific code. Only American citizens 18 years or older could compete.
25
It also would have taken 6 weeks or so to get clearance. The review cost would surpass the prize money many times over.
21
Which is why I'm surprised they proceeded with this project anyway. It seems beyond short sighted.
14
They didn't have to, they could've chosen the top few and reviewed only those.
1
Sounds fishy. More people helping will make it less likely to succeed? I guess the vetting could be substantial, but didn't you just have to be a U.S. citizen or something?
4
Yeah US citizen 18 years or older. They either completely didn't plan this out or something else is up. Either way, there were already a lot of people who were disgruntled about not getting the code earlier and departing the project.
5
not less likely to succeed. less likely to succeed in a timely manner. managing people and a thousand different directions is a real time drag.
1
There are projects on GitHub where the US government puts source code, and even as a non-US resident I can participate... And they seem to be not stupid about it compared to NASA.
https://government.github.com/community/
Some do require to be a US citizen. Some do not :-)
1
Optimisation takes time, especially if you want to keep the results you get correct. Don't rush stuff.
1
Come on guys, this isn't rocket science.
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Honestly, if they had just said they'd put my name on a rocket they were already planning to send into space, that would have been a bigger motivator than the prize they offered.
Given the amount of work you put in on something like this, compared to your extremely low chances of winning, doing it would work out to less than minimum wage.
But sending my name to space is priceless, and therefore I can't compare it to my hourly wage and realize what a bad deal it is, so I would have seriously considered it! :P
21
A good general thing to remember when trying to motivate people, is how few things people are actually motivated by:
- Money
- Power
- Love
- Respect
- Religion
That's seriously the whole list. So if you're short on cash, NASA, see if you can offer one of the others.
In this case, the respect someone could earn by contributing to humankind's space aspirations being publicly recognized with something as cheap as an awards ceremony and a stencil on the side of a rocket would have been a bigger motivator to most programmers than the money offered.
A good lesson for open source communities, too. If someone works for free, be sure to show them adequate respect for the work they put in, it means a lot and will keep people interested in committing to your project.
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Wrong. There is one thing people are motivated by:
Purpose.
Achieving and fulfilling purposes is what all of those things provide.
3†
This is what I call religion in a broader sense.
3
Religion came after purpose for humans. You have it backwards.
-1
I would say that purpose, more broadly speaking, is the experience of orienting one's life toward one or all of those goals and working toward it. But yeah, purpose is basically the whole point of being here on Earth. :)
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[deleted]
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Is this from a book? If so, which one? Thanks!
1
Possibly, that idea is distilled from alcohol-fueled late-night discussions with friends. But maybe they were reading books I haven't read. :)
2
Although now that I think about it, the book "How to Win Friends and influence People" focuses a lot around showing people that you respect and appreciate them as a way of creating and improving relationships with people in all areas of life. So in a sense, it focuses heavily on the Respect aspect of that list, and is a classic book on the topic of networking and building relationships with people.
You may want to check that out if you're interested. :)
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I haven't seen many high performance computing programmers walking the streets claiming to develop in exchange for food and shelter. So while of course we could drag in Maslows pyramid, I think the bottom layer is covered sufficiently by "money".
8
This, had they just offered to plaint names of the winners onto the rocket or satillite, most programmers would love it.
1
As someone who worked to ship the Pleiades system this is disappointing...
4
No way.. I was for sure gonna win that! Gad dom it, oh well, I'll get 'em next time
1
Government agencies tend to be run poorly
-1†
so do private companies
17
Yea, I want Uber/Comcast to run all the Fire Stations and Firefighting in the US.
We can be by your burning house between 1PM and 10PM, maybe. Also, it's fire season so you'll need to have a public rating of 4 citizen-stars or better to receive our Fire+ service (using water and extinguishing versus regular Fire service where we just bulldoze over the burning building)
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-2
Is there direct competition between NASA and SpaceX? Are you suggesting that SpaceX could replace NASA today, part and parcel? TIL 'seems to' is a valid quantitative measurement.
5
When a private company is poorly run, they go out of business.
When a government agency is poorly run, we all suffer.
2
Plenty of privately owned companies manage not to go out of business. Plenty of poorly run government agencies get axed or their leaders axed because they did poorly.
These libertarian/free market ideas are not real laws of reality.
8
there are plenty of companies poorly run that uses what in a perfect world would be criminal conduct to force fair players off market or lock consumers into a kind of bondage mostly accepted through ignorance -- and make more than plenty of money at that.
6
This has been a joke from the start. It seem half-baked with the original launch and the 'prizes' were lame as fuck. This is not the way to run something like this.
Done correctly, NASA could get all kinds of assistance from people with relative ease and very low cost. But if you are going to have a prize don't insult people with it, or have some other non-monetary thing as the reward. But most of all, don't announce a thing and then just kill it. Next time you do something like this, people wont get involved because they got shafted this time. It sends the wrong impression. NASA certainly ain't what it used to be (Or what it advertised itself as being anyway)
I tried to get a team together to participate in one of their competitions, but as I don't live in the US it turned out to be too difficult to enter the competition. Honestly, they claimed that non-US people could enter, but then made it extremely difficult to do so. It would have been better if they'd just said the competition was restricted to the US in the first place. I basically came away with the feeling that they wouldn't answer any questions directly, and after they postponed the deadline twice and contracted out the management to a 3rd party that did a fairly poor job of dealing with questions in the forum, I realized they just weren't up to hosting an international competition at all.
I felt with the initial press release a few months back that they sounded like they were desperate for some team of brainiacs to solve a problem for them, which is actually fine to want. And, done half-ass correctly would probably be easy to achieve finding people to do that, for almost no money (which is what they were offering anyway). This ending feels like something rather bureaucratic got in the way. I typically have respect for NASA, but I think they are a tad broken inside.
Yes, Yes, Yes.
In France right now. Wanted to participate with a few friends. It was even worse dealing with NASA than the current French IRS. WTF NASA.
Welcome to Trump's Murica - they don't want you. So consider going elsewhere wherey they DO want clever people.
Stop blaming random things on Trump. It numbs people to the actual, valid criticisms. This has nothing to do with Trump.
This was last year, but yeah.
What were they?
If memory serves it was $50Kish, but spread across an unknown number of participants. I was critical of the amount because their description of the problem was much bigger than what they were indicating by how much they were putting up. Usually, even if it is 'prize money' it is roughly commensurate to the size of the task.
If NASA were more open to outside assistance they would find people to do it for almost nothing, but if you must have some recompense, it should be reasonable.
How much should the prize have been? I mean $20k surely is enough to at least be a prize instead of 'prize'.
How much should the prize have been? I mean $20k surely is enough to at least be a prize instead of 'prize'.
How much should the prize have been? I mean $20k surely is enough to at least be a prize instead of 'prize'.
How much should the prize have been? I mean $20k surely is enough to at least be a prize instead of 'prize'.
How much should the prize have been? I mean $20k surely is enough to at least be a prize instead of 'prize'.
How much should the prize have been? I mean $20k surely is enough to at least be a prize instead of 'prize'.