Top supercomputer race continues with NASA/SGI box MOFFETT FIELD, CALIFORNIA - The space race may be over, but engineers at NASA's (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's) Ames Research Center Tuesday staked their claim in another type of challenge: the never-ending contest to build the world's fastest supercomputer. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the NASA supercomputing facility in Moffett Field, California, the U.S. space agency unveiled its 10,240-processor Linux-based supercomputer, named Columbia, and cited benchmark numbers that show it performing faster than any other system.