Interim Report on the Status of the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Contents of Report
Contents of Report
Pages 1-10
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THE HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS INITIATIVE "The goal of the Federal High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative is to accelerate the development of future generations of high-performance computers and networks and the use of these resources in the Federal Government and throughout the American economy."' Since its formal inception in 1991, the HPCC! has attained considerable visibility both within the computer research community and within the administration's technology-related plans and programs.
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In September ~ 992, the National Coordination Office {NCO} for High Performance Computing and Communications was established to aid interagency cooperation and to serve as liaison for the initiative to the U.S. Congress, other levels of government, universities, industry, and the public.
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technology developed, it would favor computing structures that relied on replication of smaller computing units, as opposed to monolithic computers that relied primarily on very high speed circuits that were expensive to design, procluce, maintain, and operate. This vision of high-performance computing brought two major technical challenges.
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The development of high-performance parallel computing has taken place in stages.5 The earliest attempts to build computers with a new structure used arrays of processors controlled centrally, with each individual processor doing the same operations on separate but parallel data elements. This approach, called single instruction multiple data (SIMD)
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Current Status While the preceding structural and technical information provides the larger context in which the HPCC' should be understood and evaluated, several current but narrower issues affecting the initiative also require comment. GAO and CBO Reports Recent studies of the HPCCI, one by the General Accounting Office (GAO} and the other by the Congressional Budget Office {CBOl, have been regarded by some as being critical of the entire initiative.
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is now provided by the National Science and Technology Council {NSTC} through its Committee on Information and Communication {CIC}. The High Performance Computing, Communications, and Information Technology subcommittee and the National Coordination Office, both of which report to OSTP through the CIC, continue to promote ongoing cooperation among the involved HPCC!
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Few third-party commercial developers of major applications have as yet reworked their offerings to exploit highly parallel computing. Computer scientists and computational scientists in the user-disciplines do not yet know how to convert many applications to parallel computing.
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and partly to the limitations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act on participation by people other than federal employees at governmentsponsorecl meetings. NCO Support of Mission Agencies The National Coordination Office supports the mission agencies rather than directing them.
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RECOMMENDATIONS A Stronger National Coordination Office Recommendation 1: Because the size, maturity, and visibility of the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative now warrant a stronger National Coordination Office (NCO} than was originally envisioned, the committee recommends the following approach: a. The National Coorclination Office should provide an increasingly comprehensive and intensive outreach and education service.
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1993. High Performance Computing & Communications: Toward a National Information Infrastructure, 1994.
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