Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix A: The High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative: Background
Appendix A: The High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative: Background
Pages 77-91
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From page 77... ...
In recent decades, for example, inexpensive computer power has enabled magnetic resonance imaging, hurricane prediction, and sophisticated materials design. Box A.1 lists additional selected examples of recent and potential applications of high-performance computing and communications technologies.
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From page 78... ...
Thoughtful prediction shows that supercomputers face nonlinear cost increases for designing and developing entirely new circuits, chip processes, capital equipment, specialized software, and the machines themselves. At the same time, the end of the Cold War has eliminated much of the historical market for speed at any cost.
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From page 79... ...
CHALLENGES OF PARALLEL COMPUTING Organizing a coherent simultaneous attack on a single problem by many minds has been a major management challenge for centuries. Organizing a coherent simultaneous attack on a single problem by a large number of processors is similarly difficult.
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From page 80... ...
The new paradigm concerns highly parallel computing, by which some mean hundreds of processors. The committee believes that the
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From page 81... ...
The strongest evidence, and that which convinces the committee that the parallel computing paradigm is a long-term trend and not just a bubble, comes from the surging sales of third-generation parallel processors such as the SGI Challenge, the SG!
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From page 82... ...
In a multiple instruction multiple data (MIMD) message-passing computer, each arithmetic unit has its own memory and its own instruction unit.
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From page 83... ...
recognized the technical-economic imperative to develop highly parallel computers for both military and civilian applications and acted boldly to create its high-performance computing program. This stimulus combined with a ferment of new ideas and with entrepreneurial enthusiasm to encourage several manufacturers to market highly parallel machines, among them Intel, Ncube, Thinking Machines Corporation (TMC)
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From page 84... ...
C ray Research and Convex, among others, saw their sales fall, partly due to performance/cost breakthroughs in smaller computers, partly due to the defense scale-back, and partly due to some customers switching from vector to parallel computers. The complaints of the vector computer vendors triggered studies of the HPCC]
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From page 85... ...
Programming The development of parallel computing represents a fundamental change not only in the machines themselves, but also in the way they are programmed and used. To use fully the power of a parallel machine, a program must give the machine many independent operations to do simultaneously, and it must organize the communication among the processor nodes.
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From page 86... ...
built on recommendations from the National Science Board Lax report in 1982,3 as well as a set of internal reports4 that recommended dramatic action to end the 15-year supercomputer famine in U.S.
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From page 87... ...
When originally formulated, the HPCCI was aimed at meeting several "Grand Challenges" such as modeling and forecasting severe weather events. It was subsequently broadened to address "National Challenges" relating to several important sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing and health care, and then the improvement of the nation's information infrastructure.
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From page 88... ...
~ ' ':.~ :: ' :' : . For.ecastir~g :severe weather Everett : : ~' .: .: ~': : ::.: : ' .
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From page 89... ...
as,: case..st~udies in text: : :: :.'' ''my.:. (climate modeling:: ~ : :: ~ :~ : :S:harii~g remote: :ins:t:rtii~ents : :Design aired sij~ul:ation: of: aerospace: vehicles : i: i: ~: ~ High-perform:ance life science: molecules to magnetic:resonance~imaging:: Nonrenewable energy resource recovery i::: ::~ ::Groi:indwater: remediatiori:: i: :::::: i: ~:::: ~lmproving environmental decision making ~ ~ ~: Ch:aos research arid:: applications :: \/'rtual reality technology :: : : ..
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From page 90... ...
CBO Report The primary theme of the CBO report (1993) was that because it was aimed primarily at massively parallel machines, which currently occupy only a small part of the computer industry, the High-Performance Computing Systems component of the HPCC]
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From page 91... ...
officials point out that their efforts date from the mid-1970s. For example, in 1974 DOE established a nationwide program providing energy researchers with access to supercomputers and involving a high-performance communications network linking national laboratories, universities, and industrial sites, the precursor of today's Energy Sciences Network (ESNet)
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