There are only 10 in the world, and one of them is housed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton. His name is HAL, the same name as the run-amuck computer in the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey." Like the earlier HAL, this computer has the capability to control spacecraft and most any other kind of craft. But the similarities stop there. The fictional HAL was up to no good — he went postal and cut off an astronaut’s air supply. The new HAL (his name stands for Hyper Algorithmic Logic) is wowing NASA scientists with its potential for revolutionizing computer technology in wonderful ways.

HAL is the first of a new breed of super performance computers capable of running applications 1,000 to 2,000 times faster than traditional central processing units. The key behind the speed is reconfigurable computer chips. This approach allows for multiple applications to run at the same time on the same chips, rather than executing applications in the traditional way — one at a time. "This is the most important feature of these chips, the fact you can keep changing their function," says Robert D. Bliss, director of software design for Star Bridge Systems Inc. of Midvale, Utah, the R&D company that’s developing the hypercomputer and allowing NASA to experiment with one of its prototypes.

Olaf Storaasli, a senior research scientist at Langley, is hopeful about possible applications. "If we can make leaps forward in computational capability, it has dramatic effects on analyzing things," he says. Imagine doctors being able to analyze cat scans in a fraction of a second or scientists being able to update the circuitry of satellites 22,000 miles above the Earth by transmitting software that can reconfigure a system’s functions. HAL is programmed with Star Bridge’s proprietary software, known as Viva. Besides NASA Langley, other experimental users of the hypercomputer include the U.S. Air Force at Eglin Air Force base in Florida, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the Hollywood film industry and the telecommunications industry.

Still, for all its technological muscle, "HAL can’t take over the world," says Storaasli. "It’s not like the movie."