Letter to the Editor: Expanding on Fran

By Nicole Hemsoth

August 19, 2005

Dear Editor:

I concur with Fran Berman's conclusions in her recent feature article in HPCWire [440274]. Indeed, we must set strategic priorities and concrete goals to ensure US technical leadership. However, I suggest that we must understand and acknowledge, not rationalize, the decline of the US HPC industry over the past 15 years and embark upon a much more specific new National Economic Security Initiative for the improvement of the US HPC industry. This, in my opinion, is mandatory if we hope to continue to lead the world in the development of intellectual property, the most basic commodity of our future international competitiveness.

What we have is a market where everyone, even IBM in my opinion, is losing money at the high end. There is just not enough high-end revenue to go around to sustain profitable operations, much less fund product development. Fortunately, IBM and HP have sufficient sales at the low-end to carry their losses from the high-end.  Sun has virtually exited the high-end. The same may be said shortly for HP, given its new CEO's reputation for driving profits and the recent announcement of up to 14,500 personnel cuts. It's interesting to note that in 1993, with a 70 percent high-end market share, Cray sold C-90s for $2,500 per megaflop and, of course, made money. Today, the going rate for cluster systems is as low 25 cents a megaflop with no single dominant supplier. Rather than develop real technical differentiation, most vendors are seeking market visibility by trying to impress the market with “macho FLOPS” on the top 100 list.

What has brought us to this state? First, most real world, “bread and butter” applications that used to require supercomputers can be run on simple midrange clusters. Most production applications have not been expanded/scaled up as systems have increased in size. The systems might not be efficient, but they are good enough. And that best sums up the situation. We are now in a “Good Enough” environment. Even the pursuit of new science seem to be changing Whereas new science usually used to require supercomputers, today new science is often pursued by running many capacity scale jobs to develop a panorama of results from which innovation is derived.

Second, the US government, that has led the high end market for so long, has failed, despite the HPCS program, to provide the traditional leadership to keep the US high end computer industry vibrant. At a recent Council on Competitiveness HPC Users Meeting, DreamWorks Animation produced a short film to emphasize the importance of HPC to the national competitiveness interest. I hope it gets wide dissemination among decision makers in the Administration and on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, as articulate as it is, it fails to point out two points: first, the US high-end supercomputer industry is in very poor financial health; and second, our prime international computer competitor, Japan, and I believe China and India as well, consider HPC as their prime technical priority for international scientific competitiveness.

Despite the fact that we live in a world of conflicting priorities, Congress must look past its usual vision of the long term, the next election, and recognize that the long-term future of this country is embodied in the development of intellectual property, not in manufacturing, even high tech manufacturing. Congress must make a commitment for this country to continue to lead the world in intellectual property through the investment in the most fundamental enabling technology for the development of IP, high performance computing. Our international competitors are!

So, to augment Fran Berman's more general call for national scientific goals and objectives, here are my specific recommendations for a new National Economic Security Initiative for the future:

1. Congress must recognize the importance of balance between hardware and software as we pursue PetaFLOP computing by funding over the next five years development of application software, middleware, and tools to allow users and independent software vendors to scale existing programs or create new ones to take advantage of PetaFLOP systems when available. To accomplish this, $300 million to $500 million per year for five years will be necessary. Because we cannot afford to wait, the funds for FY 06 should come from the Office of Science at DOE by reprogramming funds within existing programs. For the following years, new funds should be authorized and appropriated for DOE.

2. Because successful PetaFLOP software development will require a broad effort among industry, academia, hardware and software vendors, and government, Congress must fund a major new HPC infrastructure initiative throughout academia, the supercomputer centers, and the national labs, to provide a broad network of unclassified systems for this software development. As we approach petaFLOP computing, the US scientific community needs a large network of fifty to one hundred large new systems on the order of 100 TeraFLOPS or more to provide much broader access to real high end HPC. Installations should begin in FY06 with the objective that all be completed by mid FY 08, at which time refresh of the older systems should begin. My estimate of the cost of this initiative is one billion dollars per year for five years and must be new money to augment existing programs, especially DARPA's HPCS program.

3. Because of the concern regarding lack of students' interest in math and science, new initiatives with special student incentives from the National Science Foundation and/or the Department of Education are necessary to ensure the long term supply of talent to fund the US intellectual property machine of the future. I will reserve judgment on the scope of this recommendation but encourage Congress to pursue this issue as an investment in America's future.

4. Government should recognize that the US HPC industry must be economically competitive around the world. Until a new disruptive technology emerges, commodity processor based clusters will, because of their economic advantage, dominate the market and should be the point of government financial emphasis. If national security demands dictate continuance of custom architectures for specific applications (the submarine model), so be it; however these demands should be treated separately from mainstream technical commercial computing, and not included in the initiatives suggested above as they are not now economically competitive. Finally, for these suggestions to become reality, they must rise in the government funding priority stack. American business and academia, as well as the relevant senior executives in government, must make these issues known to Congress for their action.

Sincerely,

Charles. W. Hayes


Readers can send further comments to [email protected].

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire