SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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93–214PS
2004
H.R. 4218, HIGH-PERFORMANCE
COMPUTING REVITALIZATION ACT
OF 2004
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
MAY 13, 2004
Serial No. 108–55
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/science
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York, Chairman
RALPH M. HALL, Texas
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
KEN CALVERT, California
NICK SMITH, Michigan
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, JR., Washington
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
ROB BISHOP, Utah
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
JO BONNER, Alabama
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TOM FEENEY, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
VACANCY
BART GORDON, Tennessee
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California
NICK LAMPSON, Texas
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
MARK UDALL, Colorado
DAVID WU, Oregon
MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
ZOE LOFGREN, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
JIM MATHESON, Utah
DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California
VACANCY
VACANCY
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VACANCY
C O N T E N T S
May 13, 2004
Witness List
Hearing Charter
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert, Chairman, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Written Statement
Statement by Representative Judy Biggert, Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Written Statement
Statement by Representative Lincoln Davis, Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Written Statement
Prepared Statement by Representative Nick Smith, Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
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Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Prepared Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Prepared Statement by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Witnesses
Dr. John H. Marburger, III, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President for Technology and Strategy, IBM Corporation
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
Financial Disclosure
Dr. Rick Stevens, Director, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Oral Statement
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Written Statement
Biography
Financial Disclosure
Dr. Daniel A. Reed, William R. Kenan, Jr. Eminent Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
Financial Disclosure
Discussion
Appendix: Additional Material for the Record
H.R. 4218, High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004
Testimony of Mr. Bob Bishop, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Silicon Graphics, Inc.
H.R. 4218, HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING REVITALIZATION ACT OF 2004
THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2004
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House of Representatives,
Committee on Science,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:30 a.m., in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Sherwood L. Boehlert [Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
93214a.eps
HEARING CHARTER
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
H.R. 4218, High-Performance
Computing Revitalization Act
of 2004
THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2004
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10:30 A.M.–12:30 P.M.
2318 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
1. Purpose
On Thursday, May 13, 2004, the House Science Committee will hold a hearing to examine federal high-performance computing research and development (R&D) activities and to consider H.R. 4218, the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, which would amend the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991.
The bill is timely because high-performance computing in the U.S. is at a turning point. The fastest computer in the world today is in Japan not the U.S., and several federal agencies are in the process of reformulating their high-performance computing programs, in part, in response to the challenge posed by Japan.
2. Witnesses
Dr. John H. Marburger, III is the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Prior to joining OSTP, Dr. Marburger served as President of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and as Director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger is Vice President for Technology and Strategy for IBM Corporation. Dr. Wladawsky-Berger previously served as co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), and as a founding member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Dr. Rick Stevens is the Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). He is also a Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) TeraGrid project, which aims to build the Nation's most comprehensive, open infrastructure for scientific computing.
Dr. Daniel Reed is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Eminent Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC–CH). Previously, Dr. Reed served as Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, one of NSF's university-based centers for high-performance computing. Dr. Reed is a current member of PITAC.
3. Overarching Questions
The hearing will address the following overarching questions:
1. How does high-performance computing affect the international competitiveness of the U.S. scientific enterprise?
2. Are current efforts on the part of the federal civilian science agencies in high-performance computing sufficient to assure U.S. leadership in this area? What should agencies such as the NSF and the Department of Energy (DOE) be doing that they are currently are not?
3. Where should the U.S. be targeting its high-performance computing research efforts? Are there particular industrial sectors or science and engineering disciplines that will benefit in the near-term from anticipated high-performance computing developments?
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4. Brief Overview
High-performance computers (also called supercomputers or high-end computers) are an essential component of U.S. scientific, industrial, and military competitiveness. However, the fastest and most efficient supercomputer in the world today is in Japan, not the U.S. Japan was successful in producing a computer far ahead of the American machines in part because Japan focused on a type of computer architecture that the U.S. had ceased developing. Also, Japan focused a large amount of money on a single machine, while the U.S. funds a variety of computer development projects.
Despite the recent technical success of the Japanese, most experts still rate the U.S. as highly competitive in high-performance computing. The depth and strength of U.S. capability stems in part from the sustained research and development program carried out by federal science agencies under an interagency program codified by the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. That Act is widely credited with reinvigorating U.S. high-performance computing capabilities after a period of relative decline during the late 1980s.
The Federal Government promotes high-performance computing in several different ways. First, it funds research and development (R&D) at universities, government laboratories and companies to help develop new computer hardware and software; second, it funds the purchase of high-performance computers for universities and government laboratories; and third, it provides access to high-performance computers for a wide variety of researchers by allowing them to use government-supported computers at universities and government labs.
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In recent years, federal agency efforts once again appear to have lost momentum as federal computing activities began focusing less on high-performance computing and more on less specialized computing and networking technologies.
Responding to concerns that U.S. efforts to develop and deploy high-performance computers may have flagged, OSTP created an interagency task force—the High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force (HEC–RTF)—to examine federal high-performance computing programs and make recommendations for improvement. Dr. Marburger will release the task force report during his appearance before the Committee.
On April 27, 2004, Representative Judy Biggert introduced H.R. 4218, the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, which would update the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 and, in particular, would require the High-Performance Computing R&D Program to ''provide for sustained access by the research community in the United States to high-performance computing systems that are among the most advanced in the world in terms of performance in solving scientific and engineering problems, including provision for technical support for users of such systems.'' H.R. 4218 also requires the Director of OSTP to ''develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of high-performance computing systems for use by the research community in the United States.'' This and other provisions in the bill are designed to ensure a robust ongoing planning and coordination process so that the national high-performance computing effort is not allowed to lag in the future.
5. Major Issues Addressed in H.R. 4218
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Assuring U.S. Researchers Access to the Most Advanced High-Performance Computing Systems Available.
What the Bill Does: The bill requires the High-Performance Computing Research and Development Program to ''provide sustained access by the research community in the United States to high-performance computing systems that are among the most advanced in the world in terms of performance in solving scientific and engineering problems, including provision for technical support for users of such systems.'' The bill also specifically requires the NSF and the DOE Office of Science to provide U.S. researchers with access to ''world class'' high-performance computing systems.
Why That's Necessary: Beginning in the 1980s with the NSF supercomputer centers program, the Federal Government has been providing university researchers with access to the fastest computers. Today, university researchers are concerned that the Federal Government, and particularly NSF, may be moving away from a commitment to provide such access. While NSF has reiterated its intention to continue to provide access to the fastest computers through supercomputer centers, it has also said it will place greater emphasis on distributed collections of many computers (known as ''grid computing''), which may not provide computing capability equal to that of the fastest supercomputers. At the same time, DOE has indicated it wants to expand its efforts to provide access to large, single-location machines, but it is not clear how much access DOE will be able to provide or whether its machines will be open to researchers in all fields as NSF-funded machines are.
Assuring Balanced Progress on All Aspects of High-Performance Computing.
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What the Bill Does: The bill also requires the program to support all aspects of high-performance computing for scientific and engineering applications, including software, algorithm and applications development, development of technical standards, development of new computer models for science and engineering problem solving, and education and training in all the disciplines that support advanced computing.
Why That's Necessary: New supercomputers (hardware) alone won't help researchers. The development of advanced software and applications programs is essential to enable researchers to use the additional computing power.
Assuring an Adequate Interagency Planning Process to Maintain Continued U.S. Leadership.
What the Bill Does: The bill requires the Director of OSTP to ''develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of high-performance computing systems for use by the research community in the United States.'' This and other provisions in the bill are designed to ensure a robust ongoing planning and coordination process so that the national high-performance computing effort is not allowed to lag in the future.
Why That's Necessary: The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 codified an interagency planning process that remains in place today. However, the chief product of this process in recent years has been an annual review of activities undertaken by agencies, rather than a prospective planning document. A forward-looking process would enhance coordination between agencies and maximize the total benefit of federal investment.
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6. Current Issues in High-Performance Computing
Is the U.S. Competitive?
The world's fastest computer, Japan's Earth Simulator, is designed to perform simulations of the global environment and to address scientific questions related to climate, weather, and earthquakes. NEC, a leading Japanese computer manufacturer, built the Earth Simulator for the Japanese government at a cost of at least $350 million. The first measures of the Earth Simulator's speed, taken in April 2002, determined that the Earth Simulator was significantly faster than the former record holder—the ASCI White System at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—and also used the machine's computing power with far greater efficiency.(see footnote 1)
Twice a year, researchers at the University of Tennessee and the University of Mannheim (United Kingdom) compile a list of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers. The latest list became public on November 16, 2003 (see Table 2 in Appendix II).(see footnote 2) The Earth Simulator is approximately twice as fast as the second place machine, the ASCI Q system (located at Los Alamos National Laboratory and built by Hewlett-Packard). Of the top twenty machines, eight are located at DOE national laboratories and two at U.S. universities.(see footnote 3) IBM manufactured six of the top twenty machines and Hewlett-Packard manufactured five.
What Types of High-Performance Computers Should the U.S. Develop?
The success of the Earth Simulator has caused a great deal of soul-searching in the high-performance computing community in the U.S. The Earth Simulator is built from custom-made components, and is based on a computer architecture that the U.S. had stopped pursuing in the 1990s. At that time, U.S. programs chose to favor the use of commercially available components for constructing high-performance computers. An advantage of this approach was that it made high-performance computers more cost-effective to develop, by leveraging development costs against a larger market.
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Some computing experts have concluded that this strategy of relying largely on commercial needs to guide the development of supercomputer components has left U.S. academic researchers at a disadvantage. That's because certain kinds of research questions—such as those involved in climate modeling—are difficult to pursue on the kinds of computers that can be built with commercial components. The Japanese Earth Simulator, for example, is not based on a computer architecture that would be of widespread interest in the commercial market.
Federal agencies are in the process of reviewing their programs to decide which kinds of computer architecture R&D to pursue. H.R. 4218 is silent on this issue, but a decision on what kinds of computer architectures to pursue would be part of the planning required by the bill.
This question is significant in that NSF first became involved in offering supercomputer access because in the early 1980s foreign researchers often had more and better access to top supercomputers than U.S. researchers did. With the advent of the Earth Simulator, this may be true again for climate and earthquake researchers. Federal civilian agencies, particularly NSF, need to figure out how to help develop computers that will be useful to U.S. scientists in a wide variety of fields. The research needs of different scientific fields require distinct computer architectures, and so serving the entire user community will most likely require the development of a number of diverse computer architectures.
Supercomputers—regardless of the extent of their appeal in the commercial market—are still in the end manufactured private companies. In the U.S., the major producers of high-performance computers include IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Silicon Graphics, Inc. and Cray. Leading Japanese manufacturers include NEC, Fujitsu, and Hitachi. In the past, Congress prevented federal research funds from being used to purchase Japanese supercomputers.
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Where are the NSF and DOE Office of Science and Programs Headed?
NSF and the DOE Office of Science are the lead agencies responsible for providing high-performance computing resources for U.S. civilian research. (See Appendix II.) Both NSF and the DOE Office of Science are moving ahead in significant new directions. NSF recently signaled that it will place greater emphasis on developing grid computing resources. Meanwhile, DOE has indicated it will expand its efforts to provide access to large, single-location machines but has not yet implemented these plans. Both agencies are at a point of transition as they redefine their roles in providing access to U.S. researchers to high-performance computing resources.
NSF's support three large supercomputer centers,(see footnote 4) which in FY03 served approximately 3,000 users, mostly from academia. (When the supercomputer center program started, there were five initial centers.) In addition to providing cyberinfrastructure, NSF's Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering Directorate supports roughly $70 million of research on hardware, systems architecture, and advanced applications.
In FY04, the DOE Office of Science initiated a new effort in the development of next-generation computer architectures (NGA). The program will emphasize the development of computer architectures that do not rely on commercial components or computing needs. The Department issued an initial request for proposals for the NGA program in March 2004. The NGA Program received $38 million in FY04, and the same amount is requested for FY05.
DOE also administers the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which provides high-end computing resources to over 2,000 scientists annually. According to Department figures, 35 percent of NERSC users are university-based, but the majority are those are funded through DOE grants. The budget for NERSC is on an upward trend, up from $22 million in FY03 to $32 million in FY04, with $38 million proposed for FY05. These increases reflect the Office of Science strategy to expand its role as a provider of high-performance computing resources.
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Also, NSF and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have jointly released a solicitation for software for high-performance computing (NSF/DARPA).(see footnote 5)
7. Background
What Is High-Performance Computing?
High-performance computing—also called supercomputing, high-end computing, and sometimes advanced scientific computing—refers to the use of machines or groups of machines that can perform very complex computations very quickly. High-performance computers are, by definition, the most powerful computers in the world at a given moment in time. High-performance computers are used to solve highly complex scientific and engineering problems, or to manage vast amounts of data. Technologies improve so quickly that the high-performance computing achievements of a few years ago could now be handled by today's desktops.
The speed of high-performance computers is measured in ''flops,'' a unit signifying a calculation each second. The prefix ''Tera'' signifies trillions, and thus a one Teraflop machine can execute a trillion calculations each second. The world's fastest machine, Japan's Earth Simulator, can execute 35 Teraflops, or 35 trillion calculations each second.
What Is High-Performance Computing Used For?
High-performance computers are often used to simulate physical systems that are difficult to study experimentally. Such simulations can be an alternative to actual experiments (e.g., for nuclear weapon testing and climate modeling), or can test researchers' understanding of a system (e.g., for particle physics and astrophysics). Industry researchers use high-performance computers to simulate how new products will behave in different environments (e.g., for development of new industrial materials). Other major uses for supercomputers include performing massive mathematical calculations (e.g., for codebreaking) and managing vast amounts of data (e.g., for government personnel databases).
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Scientific Applications: High-performance computers are used to tackle a rich variety of scientific problems. Large-scale climate modeling examines possible future scenarios related to global warming. In biology and biomedical sciences, researchers perform simulations of protein structure and folding, and also model blood flows. Astrophysicists model planet formation and supernova, while cosmologists simulate conditions in the early universe. Particle physicists perform complex calculations involving the basic building blocks of matter. Geologists model stresses within the earth to study plate tectonics, while civil engineers simulate the impact of earthquakes.
National Defense Applications: The National Security Agency (NSA) is a major user and developer of high-performance computers for specialized tasks relevant to codebreaking (such as factoring large numbers). The DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is also a major user and developer of machines used in modeling nuclear weapons. The Department of Homeland Security uses high-performance computing to extract useful data from large amounts of information; to model the dispersal of plumes of biological, chemical, and radiological agents; and to identify pathogens using their DNA signatures. The Department of Defense uses high-performance computing to model armor penetration, and for weather forecasting. Many scientific applications may have future defense applications. For example, computational fluid dynamics studies could be used to model turbulence surrounding military aircraft.
Industrial Applications: The automotive industry uses high-performance computers for vehicle design and engineering. The movie industry uses massive computer animation programs to produce films. Pharmaceutical companies simulate chemical interactions to design new drugs. The commercial satellite industry manages huge amounts of data in generating maps. Financial companies and other industries use large computers to process immense and unpredictable Web transaction volumes, to mine databases for sales patterns or fraud, and to measure the risk in investment portfolios.
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What Types of High-Performance Computers Are There?
There are a number of different ways to build high-performance computers, and different configurations are better suited to different problems. While there are many possible configurations, they can be roughly divided into two classes: big, single-location machines and distributed collections of many computers (this approach is often called grid computing). Each approach has its benefits—the big machines can be designed for a specific problem and are often faster, while grid computing is attractive in part because the purchase and storage cost is often lower than for a large specialized supercomputer.
At least since the mid-1990's, the U.S. approach to developing new capabilities has emphasized using commercially-available components as much as possible. This emphasis has resulted in an increased focus on grid computing, and has influenced the designs of large, single-location machines. The U.S. has favored supercomputer designs based on ever-larger numbers of commercially available processors, coupled with improvements in information sharing between processors.
Users thus have a number of options for high-performance computing, and must take into account the pros and cons of different configurations when deciding what sort of machine to use. Users must also design software to allow the machine to solve each problem most efficiently. For example, some problems, such as climate modeling and codebreaking, require a great deal of communication between computer components. Other applications, such as large-scale data analysis for high energy physics experiments or bioinformatics projects, can be more efficiently performed on distributed machines, each tackling its own piece of the problem in relative isolation.
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What's the Status of Federal High-Performance Computing Capabilities?
In 1991, Congress passed the High-Performance Computing Act, establishing an interagency initiative (now called National Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) programs) and a National Coordination Office for this effort. Eleven agencies or offices participate in the high-end computing elements of the NITRD program. Tables 1a and 1b in Appendix II show the funding level by agency for FY03, the most recent year for which budget data is available. (The overall FY05 budget request for NITRD is $2 billion, but the breakout for the high-performance computing component of that is not yet available.)
The total requested by all 11 agencies in FY03 for high-performance computing was $846.5 million. The largest research and development programs are at NSF, which requested $283.5 million, and the DOE Office of Science, which requested $137.8 million. Other major agency activities (all between $80 and $100 million) are at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), DARPA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and NNSA. Different agencies concentrate on serving different user communities and on different stages of hardware and software development and application. (Tables 1a and 1b do not include the procurement costs for high-performance computers purchased by agencies, such as NNSA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for computational science related to their missions.(see footnote 6) )
National Science Foundation: In the mid-1980s, NSF established supercomputer centers to serve the academic community. These supercomputing centers provide researchers with access to high-performance computing capabilities and also with the technical support they need to use the facilities effectively. NSF also supports the development of the Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF), a nationwide grid of machines that can be used for advanced communications and data management. The ETF will be coming online in the next year, and a challenge for NSF will be managing the ETF to serve a wide array of users with different scientific computation needs while integrating the ETF with the supercomputing centers.
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Department of Energy: DOE has been a major force in advancing high-performance computing for many years. Both the Office of Science and the NNSA invest significantly in high-performance computing. Activities under the Office of Science include the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program, which funds research in applied mathematics, in network and computer sciences, and in advanced computing software tools. In FY04, the Office of Science initiated a new program on next-generation architectures (NGA) for high-performance computing. NNSA uses high-performance computers for simulations and weapons modeling through the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI).
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: DARPA has traditionally focused on hardware development, including research into new architectures. On July 8, 2003, DARPA announced it had selected Cray, IBM, and Sun Microsystems to participate in the second phase of its High-Productivity Computing Systems program. The goal of the program is to provide a new generation of economically viable, high-productivity computing systems for national security and industrial applications by the year 2010.
Other Agencies: NIH, NASA, and NOAA are primarily users of high-performance computing. NIH manages and analyzes biomedical data and models biological processes. NOAA uses simulations for weather forecasting and climate change modeling. NASA relies on high-performance computers for applications including atmospheric modeling, aerodynamic simulations, data analysis and visualization. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology collaborate with companies and universities to develop high-performance computing applications to address industrial problems. The NSA both develops and uses high-performance computing for a number of applications, including codebreaking. As a user, NSA has a significant impact on the high-performance computing market, but due to the classified nature of its work, the size of its contributions to High-End Computing Infrastructure and Applications and the amount of funding it uses for actual operation of computers is not public.
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Interagency Coordination: The National Coordination Office (NCO) coordinates planning, budget, and assessment activities for the NITRD Program through a number of interagency working groups. The NCO reports to OSTP and the National Science and Technology Council. The NCO also manages the HEC–RTF, an interagency effort on the future of U.S. high-performance computing. The HEC–RTF is tasked with the development of a roadmap for the interagency research and development for high-end computing core technologies, a federal high-end computing capacity and accessibility improvement plan, and a discussion of issues relating to federal procurement of high-end computing systems.
8. Witness Questions
The witnesses were asked to address the following questions in their testimony:
Questions for Dr. Marburger
1. What are the Administration's views on the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004?
2. Please describe the findings and recommendations of the High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force. How will these findings and recommendations be incorporated into the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program that you oversee?
3. What are the respective roles of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy with regard to the provision of high-performance computing resources to university researchers?
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Questions for Dr. Wladawsky-Berger
1. How does high-performance computing affect U.S. industrial competitiveness?
2. Are current efforts on the part of the federal civilian science agencies in high-performance computing sufficient to assure U.S. leadership in this area? What should agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy be doing that they are not already doing now?
3. Where are you targeting IBM's high-performance computing research efforts? Are there particular industrial sectors that will benefit in the near-term from anticipated high-performance computing developments?
Questions for Dr. Stevens
1. How does high-performance computing affect the international competitiveness of the U.S. scientific enterprise?
2. Are current efforts on the part of the federal civilian science agencies in high-performance computing sufficient to assure U.S. leadership in this area? What should agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy be doing that they are not already doing now?
3. Where should the U.S. be targeting its high-performance computing research efforts? Are there particular industrial sectors or science and engineering disciplines that will benefit in the near-term from anticipated high-performance computing developments?
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Questions for Dr. Reed
1. How does high-performance computing affect the international competitiveness of the U.S. scientific enterprise?
2. Are current efforts on the part of the federal civilian science agencies in high-performance computing sufficient to assure U.S. leadership in this area? What should agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy be doing that they are not already doing now?
3. Where should the U.S. be targeting its high-performance computing research efforts? Are there particular industrial sectors or science and engineering disciplines that will benefit in the near-term from anticipated high-performance computing developments?
APPENDIX I
SECTION-BY-SECTION ANALYSIS OF H.R. 4218, THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING REVITALIZATION ACT OF 2004
Sec. 1. Short Title
''High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004.''
Sec. 2. Definitions
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Amends section 4 of the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 (HPC Act) to further elaborate on, or amend, the definition of terms used in the Act:
''Grand Challenge'' means a fundamental problem in science or engineering, with broad economic and scientific impact, whose solution will require the application of high-performance computing resources and multi-disciplinary teams of researchers
''high-performance computing'' means advanced computing, communications, and information technologies, including supercomputer systems, high-capacity and high-speed networks, special purpose and experimental systems, applications and systems software, and the management of large data sets
''Program'' means the High-Performance Computing Research and Development Program described in section 101
''Program Component Areas'' means the major subject areas under which are grouped related individual projects and activities carried out under the Program
Strikes the definition of ''Network'' that refers to the National Research and Education Network, which no longer exists as such.
Sec. 3. High-Performance Computing Research and Development Program
Amends section 101 of the HPC Act, which describes the organization and responsibilities of the interagency research and development (R&D) program originally referred to as the National High-Performance Computing Program—and renamed the High-Performance Computing Research and Development Program in this Act. Requires the program to:
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Provide for long-term basic and applied research on high-performance computing
Provide for research and development on, and demonstration of, technologies to advance the capacity and capabilities of high-performance computing and networking systems
Provide for sustained access by the research community in the United States to high-performance computing systems that are among the most advanced in the world in terms of performance in solving scientific and engineering problems, including provision for technical support for users of such systems
Provide for efforts to increase software availability, productivity, capability, security, portability, and reliability
Provide for high-performance networks, including experimental testbed networks, to enable research and development on, and demonstration of, advanced applications enabled by such networks
Provide for computational science and engineering research on mathematical modeling and algorithms for applications in all fields of science and engineering
Provide for the technical support of, and research and development on, high-performance computing systems and software required to address Grand Challenges
Provide for educating and training additional undergraduate and graduate students in software engineering, computer science, computer and network security, applied mathematics, library and information science, and computational science
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Provide for improving the security of computing and networking systems, including research required to establish security standards and practices for these systems
Requires the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to:
Establish the goals and priorities for federal high-performance computing research, development, networking, and other activities
Establish Program Component Areas that implement the goals established for the Program and identify the Grand Challenges that the Program should address
Provide for interagency coordination of federal high-performance computing research, development, networking, and other activities undertaken pursuant to the Program
Develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of high-performance computing systems for use by the research community in the United States
Leaves substantially unchanged the provisions of the HPC Act requiring the Director of OSTP to:
Provide an annual report to Congress, along with the annual budget request, describing the implementation of the Program, including current and proposed funding levels and programmatic changes, if any, from the previous year
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Consult with academic, State, and other appropriate groups conducting research on and using high-performance computing
Requires the Director of OSTP to include in his annual report to Congress:
A detailed description of the Program Component Areas, including a description of any changes in the definition of activities under the Program Component Areas from the previous year, and the reasons for such changes, and a description of Grand Challenges supported under the Program
An analysis of the extent to which the Program incorporates the recommendations of the Advisory Committee established by the HPC Act—currently referred to as the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC)
Requires PITAC to conduct periodic evaluations of the funding, management, coordination, implementation, and activities of the Program, and to report to Congress once every two fiscal years, with the first report due within one year of enactment.
Repeals section 102 of HPC Act, the ''National Research and Education Network,'' which requires the development of a network to link research and educational institutions, government, and industry. This network was developed but has since been supplanted by the Internet.
Repeals section 103 of the HPC Act, ''Next Generation Internet,'' as this program is no longer in existence.
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Sec. 4. Agency Activities
Amends section 201 of the HPC Act, which describes the responsibilities of the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Program. Requires NSF to:
Support research and development to generate fundamental scientific and technical knowledge with the potential of advancing high-performance computing and networking systems and their applications
Provide computing and networking infrastructure support to the research community in the United States, including the provision of high-performance computing systems that are among the most advanced in the world in terms of performance in solving scientific and engineering problems, including support for advanced software and applications development, for all science and engineering disciplines
Support basic research and education in all aspects of high-performance computing and networking
Amends section 202 of the HPC Act, which describes the responsibilities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the Program. Requires NASA to conduct basic and applied research in high-performance networking, with emphasis on:
Computational fluid dynamics, computational thermal dynamics, and computational aerodynamics
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Scientific data dissemination and tools to enable data to be fully analyzed and combined from multiple sources and sensors
Remote exploration and experimentation
Tools for collaboration in system design, analysis, and testing
Amends section 203 of the HPC Act, which describes the responsibilities of the Department of Energy (DOE) under the Program. Requires DOE to:
Conduct and support basic and applied research in high-performance computing and networking to support fundamental research in science and engineering disciplines related to energy applications
Provide computing and networking infrastructure support, including the provision of high-performance computing systems that are among the most advanced in the world in terms of performance in solving scientific and engineering problems, and including support for advanced software and applications development, for science and engineering disciplines related to energy applications
Amends section 204 of the HPC Act, which describes the responsibilities of the Department of Commerce, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), under the Program.
Requires NIST to:
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Conduct basic and applied metrology research needed to support high-performance computing and networking systems
Develop benchmark tests and standards for high-performance computing and networking systems and software
Develop and propose voluntary standards and guidelines, and develop measurement techniques and test methods, for the interoperability of high-performance computing systems in networks and for common user interfaces to high-performance computing and networking systems
Work with industry and others to develop, and facilitate the implementation of, high-performance computing applications to solve science and engineering problems that are relevant to industry
Requires NOAA to conduct basic and applied research in high-performance computing applications, with emphasis on:
Improving weather forecasting and climate prediction
Collection, analysis, and dissemination of environmental information
Development of more accurate models of the ocean-atmosphere system
Amends section 205 of the HPC Act, which describes the responsibilities of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Program. Requires EPA to conduct basic and applied research directed toward the advancement and dissemination of computational techniques and software tools with an emphasis on modeling to:
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Develop robust decision support tools
Predict pollutant transport and their effects on humans and on ecosystems
Better understand atmospheric dynamics and chemistry
APPENDIX II
Table 1a: Fiscal Year 2003 Budget Requests for High End Computing by Agencies Participating in the National Information Technology Research and Development program (dollars in millions)
93214b.eps
Source: NITRD National Coordination Office Fiscal Year 2003 Blue Book. The Blue Book is released in August of each year, and thus the data on FY 2003 spending and FY 2004 budget requests levels has not yet been provided to the National Coordination Office.
Note: In addition to the research and development-type activities that are counted for the data included in this table and Table 1b, many agencies devote significant funding to the purchase and operation of high-performance computers that perform these agencies' mission-critical applications.
Acronyms: DARPA—Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DOE/NNSA—Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, EPA—Environmental Protection Agency, NASA—National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NIH—National Institutes of Health, NIST—National Institute of Standards and Technology, NOAA—National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NSA—National Security Agency, NSF—National Science Foundation, ODDR&E—Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering.
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Table 1b: Funding History from fiscal year 1992 to fiscal year 2003 of high-performance computing research and development programs at various agencies (dollars in millions)
93214c.eps
Source: NITRD National Coordination Office Blue Books, Fiscal Years 1992 to 2003.
Acronyms: DARPA—Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DOE/NNSA—Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/SC—Department of Energy's Office of Science, EPA—Environmental Protection Agency, NASA—National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NIH—National Institutes of Health, NIST—National Institute of Standards and Technology, NOAA—National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NSA—National Security Agency, NSF—National Science Foundation, ODDR&E—Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, VA—Department of Veterans Affairs.
Program History: Figures from FY 1992–1995 reflect the funding for the High-Performance Computing Systems and the Advanced Software Technology and Algorithms Programs. Figures from FY 1996–1999 reflect the funding for the High-End Computing and Computation Program. Figures from FY 2000–2003 reflect the funding for the High-End Computing Infrastructure and Applications and Research and Development Programs.
93214d.eps
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Chairman BOEHLERT. The hearing will come to order. I want to welcome everyone here today to discuss an issue that has been of continuing interest to this committee, high-performance computing.
I first became interested in this issue back in the early '80s, when I sat right at the end of the first row as a junior Member, when Ken Wilson, a Nobel laureate in physics, who was then at Cornell, testified that he and his students sometimes had to go overseas to get access to the fastest computers.
Prompted by those concerns, and by concerns about the health of the U.S. computing industry, this committee helped provide the impetus for the National Science Foundation Supercomputer Center program, which I think everyone here would agree has been a resounding success.
Indeed, spawned in part by those centers, there has been a supercomputing revolution in this country. High-performance computing has become an everyday part of scientific research in both academia and industry. Computation has become a third way of pursuing scientific questions, along with theory and experimentation.
And while the computing industry doesn't look much like it did in the early '80s—thank God for that—revolutions often leave bodies in their wake. U.S. computing capability has continued to advance, and we often hear that today's desktop computers have the power that was once limited to the highest-end models. It never ceases to amaze me that my 12-year-old grandson can hold some game of his in his hands that has greater capacity than what I was initially exposed to when Sperry Univac developed something way back when.
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But we can't take that success for granted, and indeed, there are signs of trouble ahead. The Japanese Earth Simulator was a wake-up call that our leadership is being challenged and that we, perhaps, had put too many of our eggs in pursuing computer architectures with commercial applications. And we are starting once again to hear concerns from academia that they may not have continuing access to the fastest machine. That sounds an alarm.
This concern is provoked, in part, by the somewhat mixed signals being sent both by NSF and the Department of Energy about how they will proceed in the future. I am also concerned that we not have a situation in which NSF and DOE both run to catch this particular ball, and end up with it falling between them.
The antidote to all of this is, in part, to re-invigorate the interagency process we put together in the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. I particularly wish to congratulate Mrs. Biggert and Mr. Davis for introducing a bill that would do just that. We plan to move this bill forward swiftly.
We hope that the revived process and clearer focus called for in the bill will ensure an integrated, adequately funded supercomputing effort among the federal agencies that will help the computing industry develop new machines and will help academic researchers gain access to them.
I hope our distinguished witnesses today will help us figure out how we can accomplish these goals and what else we should be doing, and I hope that Dr. Marburger will be able to assure us that we will be investing the necessary resources in high-performance computing which now undergirds all of science and engineering.
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With that, let me yield the remainder of my time to Mrs. Biggert, the chair of our Energy Subcommittee, to talk about her bill.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Boehlert follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SHERWOOD BOEHLERT
I want to welcome everyone here today to discuss an issue that has been of continuing interest to this committee, high-performance computing.
I became interested in this issue back in the early '80s, in the first years I served on this committee, when Ken Wilson, a Nobel laureate in physics who was then at Cornell, testified that his students sometimes had to go overseas to get access to the fastest computers.
Prompted by those concerns, and by concerns about the health of the U.S. computing industry, this committee helped provide the impetus for the National Science Foundation (NSF) supercomputer center program, which I think everyone here would agree has been a resounding success.
Indeed, spawned in part by those centers, there has been a supercomputing revolution in this country. High-performance computing has become an everyday part of scientific research in both academia and industry; computation has become a third way of pursuing scientific questions, along with theory and experimentation.
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And while the computing industry doesn't look much like it did in the early '80s—revolutions often leave bodies in their wake—U.S. computing capability has continued to advance, and we often hear that today's desktop computers have the power that was once limited to the highest-end models.
But we can't take that success for granted, and indeed there are signs of trouble ahead. The Japanese Earth Simulator was a wake-up call that our leadership is being challenged and that we perhaps had put too many of our eggs in pursuing computer architectures with commercial applications. And we are starting once again to hear concerns from academia that they may not have continuing access to the fastest machines.
This concern is provoked, in part, by the somewhat mixed signals being sent both by NSF and the Department of Energy (DOE) about how they will provide access in the future. I'm also concerned that we not have a situation in which NSF and DOE both run to catch this particular ball and end up with it falling between them.
The antidote to all of this is, in part, to re-invigorate the interagency process we put together in the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. I want to congratulate Mrs. Biggert and Mr. Davis for introducing a bill that would do just that. We plan to move the bill forward swiftly.
We hope that the revived process and clearer focus called for in the bill will ensure an integrated, adequately funded supercomputing effort among the federal agencies that will help the computing industry develop new machines and will help academic researchers gain access to them.
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I hope our distinguished witnesses today will help us figure out how we can accomplish those goals and what else we should be doing, and I hope that Dr. Marburger will be able to assure us that we will be investing the necessary resources in high-performance computing, which now undergirds all of science and engineering.
With that, let me yield the remainder of my time to Mrs. Biggert, the chair or our Energy Subcommittee, to talk about her bill.
Ms. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for yielding me time, and thank you for holding this hearing today.
When we think of how computers affect our lives, we probably think of the work we do on our office desktop machines, or maybe the Internet surfing we do in our spare time. We don't normally think of the enormous contribution that supercomputers, also called high-performance computers, make to the world around us.
You can't have world class science if you don't have world-class computers, and that's why my bill, H.R. 4218, allows U.S. researchers access to the high-performance computing systems that are among the most advanced in the world. To facilitate broader and easier access, H.R. 4218 also provides technical support for those users.
Keeping high-performance computing strong in this country requires coordination of our R&D efforts. Unfortunately, the interagency planning progress has lost the vitality it once had. Congress must find a way to invigorate that process. My bill does so by requiring the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to direct an interagency planning process and develop and maintain a roadmap for the research, development, and deployment of high-performance computing resources.
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The report Dr. Marburger has brought with him today is an excellent beginning, and I commend the High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force for making this valuable contribution. It is clear from the report that we have a lot of catching up to do, but now, we have a map for the first part of our journey.
There is more to supercomputing than building big machines. We need to have a balanced approach that includes software, algorithm, and applications development, development of technical standards, and education and training. H.R. 4218 requires the relevant federal agencies to support all these aspects of high-performance computing.
We could not imagine the kind of problems that the supercomputers of tomorrow will be able to solve, but we can imagine the kind of problems we will have if we fail to provide researchers in the United States with the computing resources they need to remain world-class.
I look forward to today's testimony on this important issue, and yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Biggert follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE JUDY BIGGERT
When we think of how computers affect our lives, we probably think of the work we do on our office desktop machines, or maybe the Internet surfing we do in our spare time. We don't normally think of the enormous contribution that supercomputers—also called high-performance computers—make to the world around us.
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World-class computers are essential for doing world-class science. My bill, H.R. 4218, ensures that the U.S. research community has access to high-performance computing systems that are among the most advanced in the world, and provides technical support for users of these systems.
Keeping high-performance computing strong in this country requires support at the federal level. Unfortunately, interagency planning process has lost the vitality it once had. Congress must find a way to reinvigorate that process. My bill does so by requiring the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of high-performance computing resources to the U.S. research community.
The report Mr. Marburger has brought with him today is an excellent beginning and I commend the Task Force for making this valuable contribution. It's clear from the report that we have a long way to go, but now we have a map for the first part of our journey.
We know it's not enough to simply buy big machines. We need to have a balanced approach that includes software, algorithm and applications development; development of technical standards; education, and training. I note that my bill provides support for all these aspects of high-performance computing.
As we meet in this chamber today, we cannot imagine the kinds of problems that the supercomputers of tomorrow will be able to solve. But we can imagine the kind of problems we will have if we fail to provide researchers in the United States with the computing resources they need to remain world-class. I look forward to hearing today's testimony on this important issue.
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Thank you.
Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you very much. Mr. Davis.
Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I am pleased to join you in welcoming our witnesses in this hearing that we are having on H.R. 4218, the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, which Congresswoman Biggert and I have introduced.
I look forward to working with you on this bill. The need for the legislation we are considering arises from what I would characterize as a weakening of the planning mechanisms for the program established in the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. The annual program plan required by the 1991 statute is no longer delivered to Congress at the time of the President's budget submission, and it now serves as, more often, an overview of past results than as a description and rationale for funding priorities going forward.
Another strong indicator for breakdown in the planning process is the special task force that was created last year to assess federal efforts to deploy and develop high-end computing systems, partly in response to the concern that the U.S. was falling behind in this technology.
This matter clearly should have been an important agenda item, and subsequently addressed in a comprehensive way, under the normal interagency planning and coordinating process that was established by the 1991 Act.
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The High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act has specific provisions that attempt to elevate the priority of high-end computing under this program. It also seeks to strengthen the process for allocating program priorities, and improving program implementation by requiring formal biennial reviews by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee.
Today, the Committee will hear from the President's science advisor, and from outside experts who have been asked to review the bill and provide their comments and recommendations. I am interested, obviously, in your views on whether the current priorities and resource allocations of interagency programs are properly balanced, and whether the current agency roles are effective.
In my District, we are particularly proud of Oak Ridge National Lab as it leads the supercomputing efforts of the Department of Energy. Oak Ridge and its partners will receive a $25 million grant from the Department of Energy for a supercomputer to be housed in a new 170,000 square foot facility and supported by a staff of 400.
I am thrilled that East Tennessee will be the new home of the world's fastest computer. I appreciate the attention of our—the attendance of our witnesses, and I look forward to our discussion. I yield back the remainder of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Davis follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE LINCOLN DAVIS
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Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join you in welcoming our witnesses to this hearing on H.R. 4218, the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, which Congresswoman Biggert and I have introduced.
The need for the legislation we are considering today arises from what I would characterize as a weakening of the planning mechanism for the program established in the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. The annual program plan required by the 1991 statute is no longer delivered to Congress at the time of the President's budget submission, and it now serves as more of an overview of past results than as a description and rationale for funding priorities going forward. Another strong indicator of a breakdown in the planning process is the special task force that was created last year to assess federal efforts to develop and deploy high-end computing systems, partly in response to concerns that the U.S. was falling behind in this technology. This matter clearly should have been an important agenda item, and subsequently addressed in a comprehensive way, under the normal interagency planning and coordination process established by the 1991 Act.
The High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act has specific provisions that attempt to elevate the priority of high-end computing under the program. It also seeks to strengthen the process for allocating program priorities and improve program implementation by requiring formal biennial reviews by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee.
Today, the Committee will hear from the President's Science Advisor and from outside experts who have been asked to review the bill and provide their comments and recommendations. I am interested in their views on whether the current priorities and resource allocations of the interagency program are properly balanced and whether current agency roles are effective.
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In my district, we are particularly proud of Oak Ridge National Laboratory as it leads the supercomputing efforts for the Department of Energy. Oak Ridge and its partners will receive a $25 million grant from the Department of Energy for a supercomputer to be housed in a new 170,000 square foot facility and supported by a staff of 400. I am thrilled that East Tennessee will be the new home of the world's fastest computer.
I appreciate the attendance of our witnesses, and I look forward to our discussion.
Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you very much, Mr. Davis.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE NICK SMITH
I'd like to thank Chairman Boehlert and Ranking Member Gordon for holding this hearing to examine the Federal Government's role in the development of high-performance computing capabilities. I would also like to thank the distinguished witnesses for joining us here today.
Supercomputers allow us to make discoveries and develop new products more quickly and at a much lower cost than we would have thought imaginable even 10 years ago. I welcome Dr. John H. Marburger, III, Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Dr. Rick Stevens, Dr. Daniel Reed here today and look forward to learning more about the current uses, issues and relevance in the development of high-performance computers
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As the Chairman of the Research Subcommittee, I am especially interested in the much needed continuous investment at all stages of the technology pipeline, from initial investigation of new concepts to technology demonstrations and products. With no initial, speculative research, this becomes a problem with no gain or success. With the current lack of technology demonstrations, new research ideas are much less likely to grow beyond anything but an idea. Continuous investment is needed in all contributing sectors and agencies including but not limited to the financial investment and support. Universities, national laboratories, private sector corporations and vendors need to share in every aspect of the effort to develop high-performance computers that will better the U.S. both economically by providing jobs, but also by gaining respect among the international community.
In my home state of Michigan, the auto industry is the source of a lot of jobs, but I don't think anyone back home will be too concerned if supercomputer impact modeling puts a few crash test dummies out of work.
Supercomputers are vitally important to our technological and economic competitiveness globally, so it is obviously disturbing that Japan's Earth Simulator is faster and more efficient than anything in the United States. The best hope for the U.S. to maintain its edge against rising global competition is by fostering and expanding our most prized intellectual asset: innovation. Over the past 30 years, innovation has given the U.S. and the rest of the world wave after wave of technological advancement and generated millions of high-skilled jobs. If we want to ensure that successive waves of innovation begin in the U.S., and that U.S. workers are first to benefit from ''the next big things,'' we have to have necessary innovation infrastructure in place. I'm glad that we are talking about this issue today, but I hope that we don't rush to judgment on how the Federal Government can ''fix'' the problem.
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According to an April, 2003 report, IBM it is developing, in conjunction with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, a system that will perform at twice the level as the Earth Simulator by 2005. In addition, the Department of Energy has contracted with IBM to develop two systems, ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L, that together will be able to perform 460 trillion operations per second. The Earth Simulator's peak capability is 40 trillion operations per second.
There may be some need to adjust how the Federal Government supports high-end computing to address areas of need for specific industries or types of research. Still, America's supercomputing capabilities are technologically competitive and I hope that as we move forward with this dialogue that we focus on ways to build on that strong track record.
Again, I would like to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for holding this hearing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE JERRY F. COSTELLO
Good morning. I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before our committee to discuss federal research and development activities in support of high-performance computing and the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004 recently introduced by my colleagues Congresswoman Biggert and Congressman Davis. Supercomputers are an essential component of U.S. scientific, industrial, and military competitiveness. Users of these computers are spread throughout government, industry, and academia.
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Within my home state of Illinois, the University of Illinois has the Center for Supercomputing Research and Development (CSRD). The CSRD conducts research in supercomputing and parallel processing and has developed the Cedar panel processing system to demonstrate that this technology is practical across a wide range of applications.
As the U.S. develops new high-performance computing capabilities, continued coordination among agencies and between government and industry will be required. The bill introduced by my colleagues seeks to improve coordination and accomplish the goal of developing new capabilities efficiently so that all of the scientific, governmental, and industrial users have access to the high-performance computing hardware and software best suited to their needs.
I am interested to know about the current state of U.S. competitiveness in supercomputing. Further, I am interested to know if adequate research programs are currently in place for the development of future supercomputing systems that will meet the needs of most science and engineering fields.
I thank the witnesses for appearing before our committee and look forward to their testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing to examine the very important issue of High-Performance Computing. I also want to thank our witnesses for agreeing to appear today.
We are here to examine the role the Federal Government can play in high-performance computing research and development activities. There has been much discussion on whether the United States is losing ground to foreign competitors in the production and use of supercomputers and whether federal agencies' proposed paths for advancing our supercomputing capabilities are adequate to maintain or regain the U.S. lead.
As we all know, a high-performance computer, also called a supercomputer, is a broad term for one of the fastest computers currently available. Such computers are typically used for number crunching, including scientific simulations, (animated) graphics, analysis of geological data (e.g., in petrochemical prospecting), structural analysis, computational fluid dynamics, physics, chemistry, electronic design, nuclear energy research, and meteorology.
Supercomputers are state-of-the-art, extremely powerful computers capable of manipulating massive amounts of data in a relatively short time. They are very expensive and are employed for specialized scientific and engineering applications that must handle very large databases or do a great amount of computation, among them meteorology, animated graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research and weapon simulation, and petroleum exploration.
High-performance computers are gaining popularity in all corners of corporate America. They are used to analyze vehicle crash tests by auto manufacturers, evaluate human diseases and develop treatments by the pharmaceutical industry and test aircraft engines by the aero-space engineers.
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It is quite evident that supercomputing will become more important to America's commerce in the future. I look forward to working with this committee on its advancement. Again, I wish to thank the witnesses for coming here today to help us conceptualize this goal.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jackson Lee follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE SHEILA JACKSON LEE
Mr. Chairman,
'hank you for convening this timely and provocative hearing. It seems that almost everything we do in Science, in Research and Development, is all critically dependent on computers and information analysis. American leadership in everything from Space exploration, to drug design, to defense could be jeopardized by losing the edge in computing speed and efficiency. The startup of the Earth Simulator in Japan two years ago served as a wake-up call that perhaps we are lagging in this critical field.
We need to take a close look at the possible effects of our investments, or lack of investments, in supercomputing technology. What might be the long-term effects of giving up leadership in supercomputing? Will that loss trickle-down and lead to us falling behind in chip manufacturing, software design, or education of the next-generation engineers and computer scientists? Will our industries and perhaps even defense become dependent on a foreign power?
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I hope not. It is in the American spirit to strive for excellence. The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 was meant to set us on a course to retain our leadership in computing in an array of scientific and engineering fields. Unfortunately, that initiative is falling into disarray. The Administration's proposed budget for FY 2005 actually cuts the coordinated R&D program by one percent, at a time when our economy is still struggling to rebound and federal investments in growth industries are absolutely critical.
To accent the lack of ''vitality'' in our high-end computing endeavors, the President's budget description includes a new ''High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force'' with members from around various federal R&D agencies.
We are at a cross-roads here. Japan has recently taken a lead in the supercomputing race—we can either celebrate their progress and find ways to capitalize on their investments, or we can be spurred on to greatness on our own. This committee, with excellent leadership from the Chairman and Ranking Member, has never been afraid to take on such far-reaching questions. I welcome this fine panel of experts to guide us through this dialogue, and thank them for taking the time to be here today.
I look forward to the discussion. Thank you.
Chairman BOEHLERT. And now, for our very distinguished panel, and I want to thank all of you for being resources to this committee. You help us learn, and then hopefully, we can follow and lead.
Dr. John H. Marburger III, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Marburger, welcome back. Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President for Technology and Strategy, IBM Corporation. Doctor. And for the purposes of an introduction, the Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Illinois, Ms. Biggert.
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Ms. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is my pleasure to introduce one of our witnesses, Dr. Rick Stevens. Dr. Stevens is the Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, which is located in my District, as if you didn't know, because I mention it all the time, but——
Chairman BOEHLERT. The whole world knows.
Ms. BIGGERT. He is also a Director of the National Science Foundation TerraGrid project, which aims to build the Nation's most comprehensive open infrastructure for scientific computing. And I think it is safe to say that he is probably one of the smartest residents of my District, and it is an honor for me to be able to congratulate him publicly today.
As Mr. Davis mentioned just yesterday, the DOE announced that Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne, in partnership with IBM, Cray, and Silicon Graphics, had won a peer-reviewed competition to develop the next generation architectures for high-performance computers. So congratulations, Dr. Stevens, for leading your team at Argonne in this successful collaborative effort, and also congratulations to Dr. Wladawsky-Berger from IBM.
So welcome, Dr. Stevens.
Dr. STEVENS. Thank you.
Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you very much, and congratulations, Dr. Stevens. You have a very effective advocate here in Washington. She is sitting to my left. And for the purposes of an introduction, the Chair recognizes Mr. Miller of North Carolina.
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Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to introduce Professor Daniel A. Reed, who now resides in North Carolina. He is the Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute—is it pronounced RENCI—an interdisciplinary center spanning the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State University.
Before that, he was the Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also led the National Computational Science Alliance, a consortium of roughly 50 academic institutions and national laboratories that is developing the next generation of software infrastructure for scientific computing; was one of the principal investigators and chief architect of the NSF TerraGrid.
Professor Reed is also the former head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, which is one of the oldest and most highly ranked computer science departments in the country, although I assume he will bring the ranking with him now to my alma mater.
He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Eminent Professor at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, where he conducts interdisciplinary research in high-performance computing.
Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you very much, and Dr. Stevens and Dr. Reed, it must comfort you some to know that you have Mr. Miller and Ms. Biggert here constantly reminding us of the excellence with which you do your work.
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This is a wonderful panel, and I also want to have a couple of words to say about one who is not here today. That is Mr. Robert Bishop, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Silicon Graphics, Inc. He has coined a phrase that I think neatly sums up the task before us, and this is his phrase: ''In order to out-compete economically in the 21st Century, America will have to out-compute its international competitors.''
Mr. Bishop had come to Washington from the West Coast to testify at a hearing that unfortunately had to be cancelled because of the schedule of the House. He could not join us today, but he is a valuable resource, also, as all of the panel members are, and we appreciate his good words.
We will start with Dr. Marburger.
Dr. MARBURGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I welcome this opportunity to discuss high-performance computing and the Administration's views on the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004. And I ask that my full written statement be included in the record.
I have a short oral presentation.
Chairman BOEHLERT. And without objection, the full statements of all the panelists will be included in their entirety in the record. We would ask that you try to summarize—or not be arbitrary in the time allocated, but we give you a guideline, five to seven minutes.
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Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN H. MARBURGER, III, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Dr. MARBURGER. Thank you.
Information technology does underlie many of the most technological developments of our time. It plays an enabling role in all of the President's priorities—winning the war on terrorism, securing our homeland, and strengthening the economy. Consequently, networking and information technology R&D continues to be one of this Administration's highest interagency R&D priorities. Our Office of Science and Technology Policy is actively engaged in interagency coordination of this area.
The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 laid the foundations for the multi-agency networking and information technology R&D program, which we call NITRD, which represents the Federal Government's combined R&D efforts in this field. This program remains a priority of this Administration, and is flourishing today.
In the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, the Committee has provided a timely update of this important legislation, while preserving the original legislation's intent and scope. I share your enthusiasm for and commitment to high-performance computing, and I am pleased to convey the Administration's support for this bill, the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, in its current form.
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I would like to take this opportunity to mention some Administration initiatives related to high-end computing, or supercomputing, which has been and continues to be a high priority area within the broader NITRD program. The President's Fiscal Year 2004 and 2005 budgets stressed the importance of high-end computing, as did a priority guidance memo that was sent out, or will be sent out soon—actually, in the previous year, for Fiscal Year 2005. This is a document that the OMB Director and I send to the heads of science and technology agencies every year to outline our top multi-agency R&D priorities, and NITRD has been a priority ever since I have been in Washington.
We emphasize high-end computing, because the technical activities requiring it are growing, creating a need for advanced computational capabilities that has never been greater. Decisions made years ago that were sensible at the time led to a dependence largely on bundled clusters of commercial, off-the-shelf processors. The promise of high aggregate performance at relatively low cost made the choice of these systems highly attractive. However, while these systems are effective for some classes of applications, many others, including certain applications relevant to national security analyses, are poorly served by these commercial, off-the-shelf based solutions. Addressing this problem, however, is costly, beyond the resources of all but a few federal agencies, and virtually all private sector enterprises.
In the 1990s, due to the limited market for high-end computing systems and the dramatic expansion of the market for low and mid-range systems, the U.S. computer industry focused primarily on the hardware and software needs of business applications and smaller scale scientific and engineering problems, and as a result, the flow of R&D needed to maintain high-end computing technologies in the U.S., and the human capital required to sustain its cutting edge, have failed to keep up with the opportunities for development.
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With these concerns in mind, my office, OSTP, created a task force under the auspices of the National Science and Technology Council, and made up of agency experts in high-end computing. This High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force, with an unpronounceable acronym, was asked to develop a forward-looking plan for federal high-end computing. And I am pleased to provide the Committee today with the Task Force's report, The Federal Plan for High-End Computing, which you have, I think everyone here has it.
In it, the Task Force addresses the needs of major federal science and technology areas for high-end computing, articulating and synthesizing the urgent problems facing high-end computing, and providing proposed solutions for addressing them.
These include detailed roadmaps for investments in key R&D areas, which include hardware, software and systems. Importantly, the report also includes a recommendation that future so-called leadership class systems—leading edge high capability computers capable of tackling heretofore unsolvable computational problems—be treated as national resources for use by all of the agencies that participate in the systems development, and those agencies' constituents. I provided more information on the Task Force's findings and recommendations in my extensive written testimony.
The recommendations will certainly not be implemented overnight. They will require a dedicated effort by all the relevant agencies, and OSTP is committed to facilitating this effort. Some benefits of the Task Force's work are already evident, primarily as a result of the high level of interagency cooperation in preparing the report. To cite just one example, three agencies, NSF, Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the Department of Defense, have combined forces to initiate the High-End Computing University Research Activity, a pilot program aimed at funding basic research in different theme areas related to high-end computing. Joint planning has led to two closely coordinated solicitations. The agencies' involvement in the Task Force was a key factor in the development of this program, and a sign of the future benefits we can expect from this important effort.
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I commend the Task Force for developing this report and for their commitment to continue the work they have begun, by making high-end computing a continued vigorous interagency activity that fully captures the synergies evident in this report, and I look forward to working with all of the agencies this year, to see that the Task Force's recommendations are considered in the preparation of the agencies' Financial Year '06 budget requests. Addressing the issues facing the Nation's high-end computing enterprise will require a sustained and coordinated effort. The Task Force's report constitutes an important first step.
And Mr. Chairman, I think this hearing itself is another important step. Thank you very much for the opportunity to address you on this issue today.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Marburger follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN H. MARBURGER, III
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am pleased to meet with you today to discuss high-performance computing and share with you the Administration's views on the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004. Networking and information technology (IT) research and development (R&D) continues to be one of this Administration's highest interagency R&D priorities, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is actively engaged in interagency coordination of this area.
Advancements in IT underlie many of the most important technological developments of our time. The influence of IT is truly pervasive, having a profound impact on the way we work, learn, do business, and communicate. IT plays an enabling role in all of the President's priorities: winning the war on terrorism, securing the homeland, and strengthening the economy. Its impact in this last area has been particularly profound, with tremendous increases in productivity, in particular, serving to reshape the economy. Virtually all aspects of commerce today have felt the impact of IT, from product development to supply-chain management. Federally-funded R&D underpins these advances.
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The NITRD program
For all of these reasons, the multi-agency Networking and IT R&D (NITRD) program, which represents the Federal Government's combined R&D efforts in this field, has been and remains a priority of this Administration. As such, it has been featured in each of President Bush's budget requests to Congress. The R&D aspects of the Budget are in turn shaped in part by the memorandum that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director and I send to the heads of agencies with science and technology responsibilities every year, outlining our top multi-agency R&D priorities. Agencies take this memo into account when crafting their budget submissions. The commitment to the NITRD portfolio signaled in these memos is reflected in the funding increases this program—one of the more mature R&D programs in the federal portfolio—has realized. The increases to the NITRD portfolio total 14 percent, to over $2 billion, since President Bush took office in 2001.
A formal interagency working group, which exists under the National Science and Technology Council's (NSTC's) Committee on Technology, coordinates interagency efforts related to the NITRD program. The NSTC is a Cabinet-level council that advises the President on science and technology. It is chaired by the President or Vice President, though that responsibility is typically delegated to the OSTP Director. It is the principal means to coordinate science and technology matters within the federal research and development enterprise.
The Interagency Working Group on NITRD is made up of experts from 12 different agencies with responsibilities for R&D in networking and IT. The group meets regularly and has established seven reporting categories in order to focus on particular areas of emphasis within the overall NITRD portfolio. These Program Component Areas (PCAs) cover the following areas: (1) high-end computing infrastructure and applications, (2) high-end computing research and development, (3) human computer interaction and information management, (4) large-scale networking, (5) software design and productivity, (6) high-confidence software and systems, and (7) social, economic and workforce issues related to IT. Coordinating groups associated with these PCAs meet regularly to determine research needs, coordinate activities, and review progress.
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Every year, the NITRD ''blue book''—a supplement to the President's Budget—outlines the activities and funding levels for each of the seven areas listed above. This document provides more detailed descriptions of NITRD program activities and more specific budgetary information than is present in the overall Budget. The FY 2005 blue book will be available this summer.
The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), which is made up of private sector representatives with expertise in IT, provides expert, outside advice to the NITRD program. President Bush announced his intention to appoint the current 24 members of PITAC to their positions in May of last year. They have since tackled the important issue of the role of IT in the health care system, and are embarking on an examination of the Nation's cyber security R&D activities. A future activity will address issues related to computational science, a field that focuses on scientific simulation.
The High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004
Both the NITRD program's and PITAC's foundations are found in the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102–194). The Act, which was subsequently updated with the Next Generation Internet Act of 1998 (P.L. 105–305), defines an interagency program for the Nation's networking and IT R&D activities. It required the formation of goals and priorities for high-performance computing, which was defined broadly to mean ''advanced computing, communications, and information technologies.. . .'' It required establishment of an advisory committee to provide outside advice to the program, and identified specific agency activities.
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The program that developed from this legislation—the NITRD program—is flourishing today. In the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, the Committee has provided a timely update of this important legislation while preserving the original legislation's intent and scope. I share your enthusiasm for and commitment to high-performance computing and I am pleased to convey the Administration's support for the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, in its current form.
High-end computing within the NITRD program
High-end computing—or supercomputing, as it is sometimes referred to—is an important element of the NITRD program. Certain of today's important and unsolved scientific and engineering problems can be answered only with high-end computers employing hundreds to thousands of times more computational power than is available in today's systems. These unsolved problems include important national security challenges in areas such as cryptanalysis and image processing of satellite and other data, as well as important scientific and technological questions related to the analysis of complex systems such as aircraft, the atmosphere, and biological systems.
Two PCAs exist to support interagency coordination of high-end computing within the NITRD program, one on Infrastructure and Applications, and the other on R&D. Together, they encompass advances in hardware, software, architecture, and application systems; advanced concepts in quantum, biological, and optical computing; algorithms for modeling and simulation of complex physical, chemical, and biological systems and processes; and information-intensive science and engineering applications.
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A number of agencies with active interest in high-end computing participate in coordination: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense (DOD), which includes the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director, Defense Research and Engineering, the Department of Energy (DOE) (both the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
High-end computing has been and continues to be a high-priority area within the NITRD program. The President's FY 2004 and 2005 Budgets stressed the importance of high-end computing, as did the OSTP/OMB FY 2005 guidance memorandum I referred to earlier.
NSF's and DOE's provision of high-end computing resources to academic researchers
I understand that the Committee is particularly interested in better understanding the provision of high-end computing resources by DOE and NSF to university researchers. NSF remains the largest provider of supercomputing resources to academic researchers, though need continues to outstrip demand. In addition to NSF-funded scientists and engineers, users include large numbers of NIH-, NASA-, and DOE-funded scientists and engineers.
NSF support for high-performance computing will continue to advance a broad range of science and engineering areas, with emphasis on the support of university-based science and engineering research and education. Moreover, the national community has identified a pressing need to create a state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure that integrates and makes broadly accessible state-of-the-art high-performance compute nodes, research instruments that generate research data, data storage and management resources, visualization tools that advance capabilities to interpret and analyze data, and new tools for collaboration.
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Responsive to this need, NSF's focus on cyberinfrastructure will continue to advance high-performance computing while broadening the scope of facilities and services supported to create new science and engineering knowledge. In addition, NSF will continue, through education, outreach and training as well as development of ''services'' to make this new cyberinfrastructure available to and usable by a wider range of the national research and education community.
NSF-funded high-performance computing centers include the San Diego Supercomputing Center, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. These Centers are partnering in the Teragrid effort that integrates their leading edge high-end computing facilities with complementary resources at the California Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, Indiana University, Purdue University, the University of Texas, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the resources are connected by a high-performance backbone network (40 gigabytes/second). NSF's Middleware Initiative is developing software to support distributed applications including collaboration and grid computing.
NSF builds on a wide range of collaborations among universities, federal partnerships (including DOE and DOE Labs), and other sectors. Access to these facilities is available to university researchers through application to the centers. Accounts tailored to development, mid- and high-range needs, educational use, and for Southeastern Universities Research Association and Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research applicants are available. The Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure and Teragrid facilities allocated more than 169,000,000 CPU (central processing unit) hours to users in FY 2003. Upgrades, both in progress and planned, will significantly increase available CPU hours.
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NSF continues significant investments in high-end computing; NSF plans $70 million in FY 2005 for high-end computing facilities. This investment is complemented by significant investments in education, outreach and training, which increase the number and diversity of the user communities, as well as investments in application codes, software, and new technologies for the next generation of computing.
DOE's Office of Science operates several high-end computing facilities, including (1) the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is the flagship high-end computing facility for the Office of Science; (2) the Center for Computational Sciences (CCS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and (3) the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. All are managed as unclassified open facilities in support of the DOE Office of Science mission. University researchers who are working on applications that are relevant to the broad science mission of the Office of Science can apply for access to these facilities, which is granted on a competitive peer-reviewed basis. For example, up to seven percent of NERSC resources are available to researchers for mission-relevant work that is not directly supported by the Office of Science.
An exception to the requirement for mission relevance is DOE's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program at NERSC. The goal of the program is to provide ten percent of the computational resources at NERSC in very large allocations to a small number of computationally intensive large-scale research projects selected based on their ability to make high-impact scientific advances. The INCITE program specifically encouraged proposals from universities and other research institutions.
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In FY 2004, 52 proposals were submitted, with more than 60 percent coming from academic researchers, requesting a total of more than 130 million hours of supercomputer processor time. The three awards in FY 2004 amount to ten percent of the total computing time available on NERSC's current IBM supercomputer.
The Office of Science yesterday announced an award for their ''Leadership-class System,'' a $25 million investment in FY 2004. The request for applications for acquisition of this leadership-class system specified that ''Proposed activities should be designed to support computational science applications research areas relevant to the mission of the Office of Science, as well as those of other federal agencies.'' University researchers—regardless of which federal agency supports their work—will be granted access to this leadership-class computational resource, again on a competitive peer-reviewed basis.
Challenges facing the high-end computing enterprise
The challenges facing high-end computing today are significant. Decisions made years ago-sensible at the time—led to a dependence largely on bundled clusters of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) processors. The promise of high aggregate performance at relatively low cost made the choice of these systems highly attractive. However, we now know that while these systems are effective for some classes of applications, many others—including certain applications relevant to national security considerations—are poorly served by COTS-based solutions. Addressing this problem, however, is costly—prohibitively so—for all but a few federal agencies and virtually all private-sector enterprises.
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In the 1990s, due to the limited market for high-end computing systems and the dramatic expansion of the market for low and mid-range systems, the U.S. computer industry focused primarily on the hardware and software needs of business applications and smaller scale scientific and engineering problems. As a result, the flow of R&D needed to maintain high-end computing technologies in the U.S., and the human capital required to sustain its cutting edge, have failed to keep up with opportunities for development.
The High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force
With these concerns in mind, OSTP initiated the organization of a task force, under the auspices of the NSTC, made up of agency experts in high-end computing. This High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force (HECRTF) was given a specific charge based on the issues outlined in the President's FY 2004 Budget, which said:
''Due to its impact on a wide range of federal agency missions ranging from national security and defense to basic science, high-end computing—or supercomputing—capability is becoming increasingly critical. Through the course of 2003, agencies involved in developing or using high-end computing will be engaged in planning activities to guide future investments in this area, coordinated through the NSTC. The activities will include the development of an interagency R&D roadmap for high-end computing core technologies, a federal high-end computing capacity and accessibility improvement plan and a discussion of issues (along with recommendations where applicable) relating to federal procurement of high-end computing systems. The knowledge gained from this process will be used to guide future investments in this area. Research and software to support high-end computing will provide a foundation for future federal R&D by improving the effectiveness of core technologies on which next-generation high-end computing systems will rely.''
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Specifically, the Task Force was asked to develop a forward-looking plan for high-end computing with the following three components: (1) an interagency R&D roadmap for high-end computing core technologies, (2) a federal high-end computing capacity and accessibility improvement plan, and (3) recommendations relating to federal procurement of high-end computing systems.
I am pleased to provide the Committee with the Task Force's report, the Federal Plan for High-End Computing. In its report, the Task Force addresses the needs of major federal science and technology areas for high-end computing, articulating and synthesizing the urgent problems facing high-end computing.
The Task Force lays out detailed roadmaps for investments in key R&D areas, which include hardware, software, and systems. They emphasize the importance of addressing the increasing gap between the theoretical peak performance and the sustained system performance of high-end computers—a problem that has plagued the massive multi-processor systems currently in use. Their report also emphasizes the need for procurement of ''early access'' systems that will enable the development of more robust systems and help identify failed approaches before full-scale procurements take place.
The report also addresses issues related to the acquisition, operations, and maintenance of high-end computing systems by agencies, including so-called ''leadership class'' systems—leading-edge, high-capability computers capable of tackling heretofore unsolvable computational problems. The Task Force recognized that the costs associated with the development of leadership systems are beyond the reach of almost any agency working alone. At the same time, the Task Force emphasized that the need is great: demand for high-end computing capabilities surpasses the resources available in every agency, and some of the smaller agencies, such as EPA and NIST, rely on the resources of other agencies to meet their need. To address this, the Task Force recommends that future leadership systems be treated as national resources, for use by all of the agencies that participate in the system's development (and those agencies' constituents). They suggest specific mechanisms by which agencies that lack the resources to develop high-end computing systems can partner with larger agencies for access to existing systems.
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Additional sections of the report address procurement issues, which are currently hampered by the diversity of agency needs for high-end systems and their practices governing procurement of them. The Task Force suggests the initiation of several pilot projects related to procurement to address this. These include the development of improved suites of benchmarks that better mirror applications, an evaluation of the total cost of ownership of several similar systems, and the development of a common solicitation and use of a single suite of benchmarks for procurement, using lessons learned from the first two pilot projects.
Finally, the report describes interagency mechanisms through which to coordinate implementation of various aspects of the plan.
It is important to recognize that benefits of the Task Force's work have already begun to accrue, with the high level of interagency cooperation already leading to tangible results. For example, three agencies—NSF, DOE's Office of Science and DOD—have combined forces to initiate the High-End Computing University Research Activity, a pilot program aimed at funding basic research in different ''theme'' areas related to high-end computing. Joint planning has led to two closely coordinated solicitations. With software as the theme for 2004, NSF recently issued a program solicitation (that also incorporates DARPA interests) for research on ''Software and Tools for High-End Computing.'' This program, for which the anticipated funding of $7 million was provided by both NSF and DARPA, will support ''innovative research activities aimed at building complex software and tools (on top of the operating system) for high-end architectures.'' A second solicitation, from DOE's Office of Science but also with DARPA interest and funding, is focused on ''Operating/Runtime Systems for Extreme Scale Scientific Computation.'' The agencies' involvement in the HECRTF was a key factor in the development of these programs, and a sign of the future benefits we can expect from this important effort.
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I commend the Task Force for developing their report and for their commitment to continue the work that they have begun by making high-end computing a continued, vigorous interagency activity that fully captures the synergies evident in their report. I look forward to working with all of the agencies this year to see that the Task Force's recommendations are considered in the preparation of agencies' FY 2006 budget requests. Addressing the issues facing the Nation's high-end computing enterprise will require a sustained and coordinated effort. The Task Force's report constitutes an important first step.
BIOGRAPHY FOR JOHN H. MARBURGER, III
John H. Marburger, III, Science Adviser to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, was born on Staten Island, N.Y., grew up in Maryland near Washington D.C. and attended Princeton University (B.A., Physics 1962) and Stanford University (Ph.D., Applied Physics 1967). Before his appointment in the Executive Office of the President, he served as Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1998, and as the third President of the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1980–1994). He came to Long Island in 1980 from the University of Southern California where he had been a Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, serving as Physics Department Chairman and Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in the 1970's. In the fall of 1994 he returned to the faculty at Stony Brook, teaching and doing research in optical science as a University Professor. Three years later he became President of Brookhaven Science Associates, a partnership between the university and Battelle Memorial Institute that competed for and won the contract to operate Brookhaven National Laboratory.
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While at the University of Southern California, Marburger contributed to the rapidly growing field of nonlinear optics, a subject created by the invention of the laser in 1960. He developed theory for various laser phenomena and was a co-founder of the University of Southern California's Center for Laser Studies. His teaching activities included ''Frontiers of Electronics,'' a series of educational programs on CBS television.
Marburger's presidency at Stony Brook coincided with the opening and growth of University Hospital and the development of the biological sciences as a major strength of the university. During the 1980's federally sponsored scientific research at Stony Brook grew to exceed that of any other public university in the northeastern United States.
During his presidency, Marburger served on numerous boards and committees, including chairmanship of the governor's commission on the Shoreham Nuclear Power facility, and chairmanship of the 80 campus ''Universities Research Association'' which operates Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. He served as a trustee of Princeton University and many other organizations. He also chaired the highly successful 1991/92 Long Island United Way campaign.
As a public spirited scientist-administrator, Marburger has served local, State and Federal Governments in a variety of capacities. He is credited with bringing an open, reasoned approach to contentious issues where science intersects with the needs and concerns of society. His strong leadership of Brookhaven National Laboratory following a series of environmental and management crises is widely acknowledged to have won back the confidence and support of the community while preserving the Laboratory's record of outstanding science.
Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you very much, Dr. Marburger. Dr. Wladawsky-Berger.
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STATEMENT OF DR. IRVING WLADAWSKY-BERGER, VICE PRESIDENT FOR TECHNOLOGY AND STRATEGY, IBM CORPORATION
Dr. WLADAWSKY-BERGER. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to be here with you.
I was asked to comment on three questions, and have done so at length in the testimony I have submitted for the record. All three questions go to the heart of some very critical issues of competitiveness, the role of government, and our own strategy for high-performance computing.
I have given considerable thought to issues like this in the course of my 30 plus years in the IT industry. During that time, I have been associated in one way or another with high-performance computing, and based on that experience, I am convinced that supercomputers are more important now than they have ever been.
In response to the Committee's first question, let me say, as unambiguously as I can, that supercomputers are essential to overall U.S. leadership in a global marketplace, and in particular, to U.S. industrial competitiveness. I say that for two reasons. First, the increasing importance of Grand Challenge applications, such as those originally posed by the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. And second, the fact that we are becoming an increasingly integrated information-based society, subject to unremitting change and relentless competitive pressures.
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The Grand Challenges that the HPC Act envisioned us tackling were profound, among them, the prediction of global climate change, new improved drugs, and understanding the formation of galaxies, the nature of new materials, and the structure of biological molecules.
Thanks to the combined efforts of industry, academia, and government, the U.S. established a strong position of global competitive leadership in high-performance computing. We did so with machines that by today's standards are rudimentary. Ten years ago, for example, the number one ranked machine on the world's Top 500 list of supercomputers performed 125 billion calculations per second. Today, it would not even make the list. And we did it, not with machines alone, but by building and exploiting an HPC infrastructure of skills, applications, and R&D, as well as government, university, and industry collaborations. All in all, that infrastructure has ensured sustainable leadership for the long-term.
Today, the Grand Challenges are grander still, both in their complexity and in the opportunity they present. Life science, for example, is an entirely new Grand Challenge for supercomputing, one that can revolutionize health care in this country and the rest of the world. It is a Grand Challenge we cannot afford to ignore. Our c