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Summary
C
omputing and information and communications improving chip performance, mobile devices, and cloud
technology (ICT) has dramatically changed how services. As these technical shifts reshape the computing
we work and live, has had profound effects on industry, with global consequences, the United States
nearly every sector of society, has transformed whole must be prepared to exploit new opportunities and to
industries, and is a key component of U.S. global deal with technical challenges. The following sections
leadership. A fundamental driver of advances in outline the technical challenges, describe the global
computing and ICT has been the fact that the single- research landscape, and explore implications for
processor performance has, until recently, been steadily competition and national security.
and dramatically increasing year over year, based on a
combination of architectural techniques, semiconductor Sequential Past, Parallel Future
advances, and software improvements. Users,
developers, and innovators were able to depend on those For multiple decades, single-processor performance
increases, translating that performance into numerous has increased exponentially, driven by higher clock rates,
technological innovations and creating successive reductions in transistor size, faster switching via
generations of ever more rich and diverse products, fabrication improvements, and architectural and software
software services, and applications that had profound innovations that increased performance while preserving
effects across all sectors of society.1 However, we can no software compatibility with previous-generation
longer depend on those extraordinary advances in single- processors. This practical manifestation of Moore's
processor performance continuing. Law--the doubling of the number of transistors on a
This slowdown in the growth of single-processor given amount of chip area every 18 to 24 months--
computing performance has its roots in fundamental created a virtuous cycle of ever-improving single-
physics and engineering constraints--multiple processor performance and enhanced software
technological barriers have converged to pose deep functionality.
research challenges, and the consequences of this shift Hardware and software capabilities and
are deep and profound for computing and for the sectors sophistication grew exponentially in part because
of the economy that depend on and assume, implicitly or hardware designers and software developers could
explicitly, ever-increasing performance. From a innovate in isolation from each other, while still
technology standpoint, these challenges have led to leveraging each other's advances. Software developers
heterogeneous multicore chips and a shift to alternate created new and more feature-filled applications,
innovation axes that include, but are not limited to, confident that new hardware would deliver the requisite
performance to execute those applications. In turn, chip
1
National Research Council, The Future of Computing: Game designers delivered ever-higher performance chips,
Over or Next Level?, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies while maintaining compatibility with previous
Press (available online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_ generations.
id=12980) and NRC, 2003, Innovation in Information Technology, Users benefitted from this hardware-software
Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press (available interdependence in two ways. Not only would old
online at http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10795).
1
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2 THE GLOBAL ECOSYSTEM IN ADVANCED COMPUTING
software execute faster on new hardware, without accelerators and reconfigurable logic for increased
change, but also new applications exploited advances in performance while simultaneously meeting power
graphics and rendering, digital signal processing and constraints.
audio, networking and communications, cryptography Whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, these
and security--all made possible by hardware advances. chips are dependent on parallel software for operation,
Unfortunately, single-processor performance is now for there is no known alternative to parallel
increasing at much lower rates--a situation that is not programming for sustaining growth in computing
expected to change in the foreseeable future. performance. However, unlike in the sequential case,
The causes for the declining rates of chip hardware there is no universally accepted, compelling
performance improvements begin with the limit on chip programming paradigm for parallel computing. Absent
power consumption, which is proportional to the product such programming models and tools, creating
of the chip clock frequency and the square of the chip increasingly sophisticated applications that fully and
operating voltage. As chip clock frequencies rose from effectively exploit parallel chips is difficult at best. Thus,
megahertz to gigahertz, chip vendors improved there exists a great opportunity and need for renewed
fabrication processes and reduced chip operating research on parallel algorithms and programming
voltages and, thus, power consumption. methodologies, recognizing that this is a challenge and
However, it is no longer practical to increase long-studied problem. However, because multicore chips
performance via higher clock rates, due to power and are dependent on parallel programming, it is prudent to
heat dissipation constraints. These constraints are continue such explorations.
themselves manifestations of more fundamental Although further research in parallel programming
challenges in materials science and semiconductor models and tools may ameliorate this problem (e.g., via
physics at increasingly small feature sizes. While the domain-specific languages, high-level libraries, and
market for the highest performance server processor toolkits), 40 years of research in parallel computing
chips continues to grow, the market demand for phones, suggests this outcome is by no means certain. When
tablets, and netbooks has also increased emphasis on combined with the need for increasingly rapid
low-power, energy-efficient processors that maximize development cycles to respond to changing demands and
battery lifetime. the rising importance of software security and resilience
Finally, the use of additional transistors to preserve in an Internet-connected world, the programming
the sequential instruction execution model while challenges are daunting. In combination, the continued
accelerating instruction execution reached the point of slowing of processor performance and the uncertainty of
diminishing returns. Indeed, most of the architectural a parallel software future poses potential short- and long-
ideas that were once found only in exotic term risks for U.S. national security and the U.S.
supercomputers (e.g., deep pipelines, multiple instruction economy. This report focuses on the competitive
issue, out-of-order instruction logic, branch prediction, position of the U.S. semiconductor and software
data and instruction prefetching) are commonplace industries and their impact on U.S. national security in
within microprocessors. the new norm of parallel computing.
The combination of these challenges--power
limitations, diminishing architecture returns, and Global Competition and the Research Landscape
semiconductor physics challenges--drove a shift to
multicore processors (i.e., placing multiple processors, Because of this disruption to the computing
sometimes of differing power or performance and ecosystem,2 major innovations in semiconductor
function, on a single chip). By making parallelism processes, computer architecture, and parallel
visible to the software, this technological shift disrupted programming tools and techniques are all needed if we
the cycle of sequential performance improvements and are to continue to deliver ever-greater application
software evolution atop a standard hardware base. performance.
Beginning with homogeneous multicore chips (i.e.,
multiple copies of the same processor core), design 2
The advanced computing ecosystem refers not only to the
alternatives are evolving rapidly, driven by the twin benefits from and interdependencies between breakthroughs in
constraints of energy efficiency and high performance. academic and industry science and engineering research and
In addition, system-on-a-chip designs are combining commercialization success by national, multi-national and global
heterogeneous hardware functions used in smartphones, companies, but also the underlying infrastructure (that includes
components such as workforce; innovation models, e.g., centralist
tablets, and other devices. The result is a dizzying variety versus entrepreneurial; global knowledge networks; government
of parallel functionality on each chip. It is likely that leadership and investment; the interconnectedness of economies;
even more heterogeneity will arise from expanded use of and global markets) that underpin technological success.
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SUMMARY 3
In the past, the U.S. Department of Defense's competitors certainly are. The principal future national
(DOD) uptake of U.S. computing technology research security concerns for the United States related to
designed especially for it and now increasingly adapted anticipated computing shifts and limits on single-
from the fast-moving consumer market has resulted in a processor performance come not just from the threat to
large U.S. advantage. In the future, the rate of change in U.S. technological superiority, but also from changes to
the competitive position of the United States in the nature and structure of the marketplace for
computing technology will increasingly depend in part computing and information technology. U.S. challenges
on other countries' basic research capabilities and the include maintaining the integrity of the global supply
types of research and development (R&D) policies they chain for semiconductors, which is exacerbated by the
pursue, as well as the associated economic climate. Of convergence of civilian and defense technologies, as
course, many factors influence the range and type of well as the rise of a new ecosystem of smart devices,
policy options available in each region. Countries also based on licensable components and created by
differ in their levels of development and in their semiconductor design firms without fabrication
economic institutions, and pursue quite different capabilities.
approaches to innovation policy. Over time, the increasing presence and
Historically, the United States has relied on market establishment of foreign markets that are larger, are
forces and the private sector to convert university potentially more lucrative, and have better long-term
research ideas, funded by the federal government, into growth potential than in the United States and other
marketable products. In contrast, the European Union developed countries could also have significant
and emerging economies such as China, Korea, and implications. Any shift in the global commercial center
Taiwan rely much more on the government to define the of gravity could lead to a shift in the global R&D center
strategic objectives and key parameters. For example, of gravity as international firms are required to locate in
recent Chinese innovation policies have played an these markets if they are to remain competitive and to
increasing role in strengthening its indigenous meet the requirements of government regulations in the
innovation capabilities. There is also evidence that China target markets.
is transitioning toward economic outcome-driven science Shifting from policy to technology, the parallel
and technology programs focused on technologies of programming challenges in delivering high performance
national strategic importance--many of which are on multicore chips are real and global, with no obvious
advanced computing technologies. In contrast, Taiwan's technical solutions. Barring research breakthroughs,
innovation policies are focused on moving its IT developing applications that exploit on-chip parallelism
industries beyond the traditional "global factory" model. effectively (or vice versa, by developing approaches to
Thus, innovation polices emphasize low-cost and fast on-chip parallelism that better support application needs)
innovation by strengthening public and private will remain an intellectually challenging task that is
partnerships that leverage domestic and global dependent on highly skilled software developers. When
innovation networks. combined with the need for rapid application
development, nimble response to shifting threats, and the
Competitive Implications and National Security ever-present desire for new features, equating
competitive advantage in computing solely with single-
In the committee's view, the United States currently processor performance (and associated application
enjoys a technological advantage in many computing performance) may not be wise. Going forward, metrics
technologies. Nonetheless, this technological gap is such as system reliability, energy efficiency, security
narrowing as other countries, such as China, make a adaptability, and cost will inevitably become more
concerted effort to develop their own indigenous salient. Power consumption is the major constraint on
computing design and manufacturing capabilities and as chip performance and device utility. Innovation in
design and fabrication of such technologies, as well as software, architecture, hardware, and other computing
software development, are increasingly distributed technologies will continue apace, but the primary axes of
globally. innovation are shifting, and organizations such as the
Thus, it is important to take a long-term perspective U.S. DOD will need to adapt their computing and IT
on our approaches to computing innovation, technology strategies accordingly.
uptake, and defense policy, for the United State's global
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