HPCwire: Senate Subcommittee Hears Testimony on HPC

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July 28, 2006

Senate Subcommittee Hears Testimony on HPC

by Tiffany Trader, Associate Editor, HPCwire

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On July 19, 2006 the Senate Subcommittee on Technology, Innovation, and Competitiveness listened to testimony from expert witnesses on the subject of high performance computing in the context of national competitiveness. The hearing was presided over by Subcommittee Chairman John Ensign (R-NV). Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is the minority lead on the committee.

This hearing has the potential to generate interest in companion Senate legislation to the High Performance Computing Revitalization Act (HR.28) passed by Congress in April 2005, which Cantwell has called "a good framework to start with."

The witnesses shared their diverse experience to create a varied portrait of the state of high performance computing. What follows is an outline of each of the contributor's main points:

Dr. Simon Szykman, Director, National Coordination Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development

Dr. Szykman affirmed the importance of federal funding and interagency coordination with regard to high performance computing in the context of global competitiveness and progress. He stated that over the past few years, high performance computing has become more of a priority in the Federal R&D portfolio. Nowhere is that better documented than in the funding for the NITRD Program, which in five years has seen a budget increase of over 65 percent with a budget request of over $1.3 billion for fiscal year 2007.

He highlighted several examples that have come as a result of interagency collaboration, namely the DARPA HPCS program, the High-End Computing University Research Activity (HEC-URA) program and the development of benchmarks, performance metrics and measurement tools. He also discussed issues of innovation and competitiveness in the global market that came about in March 2002 when Japan's Earth Simulator became the world's fastest supercomputer. Szykman downplayed the occurrence, saying that the Japanese machine now holds sixth place, U.S. vendors are the dominant suppliers of supercomputing systems, and even foreign systems rely overwhelmingly on U.S. technologies.

Szykman went on to say, "The fact that the U.S. currently holds the title of world's fastest supercomputer does not herald a new era in U.S. leadership in high performance computing any more than the loss of the number one position implied a loss of leadership. High performance computing has been -- and will continue to be -- a cornerstone in the government's networking and information technology R&D portfolio. The clearest demonstration of progress over the past four years, however, should not be viewed in terms of the raw speed of the world's fastest machine, but rather in the context of the growing focus on domestic high performance computing policy, the unprecedented interagency coordination and collaboration on technical planning and implementation taking place within the government research community, and the increasingly cooperative ties between the Government research community and the private sector."

Dr. Irving Wladasky-Berger, Vice President, Technical Strategy and Innovation at IBM

Dr. Wladasky-Berger discussed advancements in supercomputing and its key applications and outlined a strategy for success long-term success. He listed several key achievements, among them IBM's claim to the three fastest supercomputers: Blue Gene/L, Blue Gene/W and ASC Purple.

Wladasky-Berger explained how supercomputers enable discoveries and advancements that would not otherwise be possible, citing the discovery of "docking sites" for new drugs and simulations that allow scientists to better understand the earth's climate. He went on to say that while technology, architecture and software are important, the real value of supercomputing to society is in its application in areas as diverse as defense and national security, science, weather/climate, engineering, energy, bioinformatics/biology, health care, business and learning.

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