DOCUMENT RESUME ED 336 083 IR 015 102 TITLE Grand .

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYHigh performance computing and computer communications networksare becoming increasingly important to scientific advancement,economic competition, and national security. The technology is reachingthe point of having a transforming effect on our society, industries, andeducational institutions. The goal of the Federal High PerformanceComputing and Communications (HPCC) Program is to acceleratesignificantly the commercial availability and utilization of the nextgeneration of high performance computers and networks in a mannerconsistent with the Strategic and Integrating Priorities shown in Figure 1.The HPCC Program is the result of several years of ef fort on the partof senior government, industry, and academic scientists and managersto design a research agenda to extend U.S. leadership in highperformance computing and networking technologies.For FY 1992 the HPCC Program proposes to invest 638 million inthe four complementary and coordinated components shown inFigure 1. This investment represents a 149 million, or 30%, increaseover the FY 1991 enacted level.The HPCC Program is driven by the recognition that unprecedentedcomputational power and capability is needed to investigate andunderstand a wide range of scientific and engineering "grandchallenge" problems. These are fundamental problems whose solutionis critical to national needs. Progress toward solution of these problemsis essential to fulfilling many of the missions of the participatingagencies. Examples of grand challenges addressed include: predictionof weather, climate, and global change; determination of moiecular,atomic, and nuclear structure; understanding turbulence, pollutiondispersion, and combustion systems; mapping the human genome andunderstanding the structure of biological macromolecules; improvingresearch and education communications; understanding the nature ofnew materials; and problems applicable to national security needs.The HPCC Program nurtures the educational process at all levels byimproving academic research and teaching capabilities. Advancedcomputing and computer communications technologies will acceleratethe research process in all disciplines and enable educators to integratenew knowledge and methodologies directly into course curricula.Students at all levels will be drawn into learning and participating in awide variety of research experiences in all components of this program.The FY 1992 Program and this document were developed by theHPCC Working Group under the direction of the Committee onPhysical, Mathematical, and Engineering Sciences of the FederalCoordinating Council for Science. Engineering, and Technology.

Figure 1The High Performance Computingand Communications Program1.1Coals: Strategic PrioritiesExtend U.S. technological leadership in high performance computing andcomputer communications.Provide wide dissemination and application of the technologies both to speedthe pace of innovation and to serve the national economy, national security,education, and the global environment.Spur gains in U.S. productivity and industrial competitiveness by making highperformance computing and networking technologies an integral part of thedesign and production process.Strategy: Integrating PrioritiesSupport solutions to important scientific and technical challenges through avigorous R&D effort.Reduce the uncertainties to industry for R&D and use of this technologythrough increased cooperation between government, industry, and universitiesand by the continued use of government and governmentfunded facilities as aprototype user for early commercial HPCC products.Support the underlying research, network, and computationa infrastructures onwhich U.S. high performance computing technology is based.Support the U.S. human resource base to meet the needs of industry,universities, and government.7511M11Program ComponentsHigh Performance Computing SystemsResearch for Future Generations of Compiling SystemsSystem Design ToolsAdvanced Prototype SystemsEvaluation of Early SystemsAdvanced Software Technology and AlgorithmsSoftware Support for Grand ChallengesSoftware Components and ToolsComputational TechniquesHigh Performance Computing Research CentersNational Research and Education NetworkInteragency Interim NRENGigabits Research and DevelopmentBasic Research and Human ResourcesBasic ResearchRescarch Participation and TrainingInfrastructureEducation, Training, and Curriculum2

I. PROGRAM GOALS AND OVERVIEWIntroductionHigh performance computing (HrC) is emerging as a powerfultechnology for industrial design and manufacturing, scientific research,communications, and information management. A robust U.S. highperformance computing and computer communications capabilitycontributes to leadership in critical technology and national securityareas. Improved computational and communications technologiescontribute to more effective approaches to probbnn solving, newoducts and services, and enhanced national competitiveness acrossbroad sectors of the economy.Recent advances offer the potential for a thousandfold improvement inuseful computing capability and a hundred4old improvement inavailable computer communications capability by 1996. Based onseveral years of planning, under the auspices of the FederalCoordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology(FCCSET), Federal agencies and the technical community havedeveloped the Federal High Performance Computing andCommunications (HPCC) Program to realize this potential and to meetthe challenges of advancing computing and associated communicationstechnology and practices. Agencies have realigned and enhanced theirhigh performance computing research and development programs,coordinated their activities with other agencies, and shared commonresources to develop the program presented in this document.Needs and BenefitsHigh periormance computing has become a vital enabling force in theconduct of science and engineering research over the past three decades.Computational science and engineering has joined, and in some areasdisptaced, the traditional methods of theory and experiment. Forexample, in the design of commercial aircraft, many engineering issuesare resolved through computer simulation rather than through costlywind tunnel experiments. This trend has been powered by computinghardware and software, computational methodologies and algorithms,availability and access to high performance computing systems andinfrastructure, and the growth of a trained pool of scientists andengineers. This process has been nurtured by Federal investment inadvanced research, agency supercomputer centers, and nationalnetworks through DARPA, DOE, NASA, NSA, and NSF. Thesefacilities have contributed to national mission areas such as energy,space, health, defense, environment, weather, and basic science and-513

technology that could not be effectively addressed without the use ofsuch advanced facilities.High performance computing technology is knowledge and innovationintenswe. Its development and use engages the entire scientific andengineering community. Building upon fundamental research of theearly 1980's, a new computing technology of scalable parallelprocessing computers emerged. By the mid-1990's, this innovativeapproach to high performance computing systems promises to achievesustained performance improvements of a thousandfold compared tocurrent systems.In a growing number of science and technology fields, progress andproductivity in modem research are increasingly depenoent on the closeinteraction of people located in distant places, sharing and accessingcomputational resources across networks. Although the U.S. is theworld leader in most of the critical aspects of computing technology, thislead is being challenged.The Federal HPCC Program is a strategic Federal investment in thefrontiers of computing and computer communications technologies andis formulated to satisfy national needs from a variety of perspectivesincluding: technology, science applications, human resources, andtechnology transition. Needs are derived from the agency missions andbased on the underlying science, engineering, and technology baserequired to carry out these missions. Many of these mission needs arerelated to solving very intensive large scale computing problems. Thesefundamental problems often cut across various agencies and missionsand are called grand challenge problems (Figure 2).The industrial and academic sectors provide major sources ofinnovation, cost effective development, and support of informationtechnologies and their application to grand challenge problems. Asthese technologies are developed, the results support the Federal agencymissions and become available nationally. The program provides fordevelopment of these revolutionary technologies within a framework ofa partnership among government, industry, and academe and allows forrapid transition of laboratory results into new products that will then beapplied within the program.

Figure 2Performance Requirementsfor Grand Challenge ProblemsGrand Challen esClimate ModelingFluid TurbulencePollution DispersionHuman GenomeOcean CirculationQuantum ChromodynamicsSemiGonductor ModelingSuperconductor ModelingCombustion SystemsVkiion and CognitionComputer Performancein Billions of Operationsper Second1000MUM.100Vehicle Signature10Mal ULSI DesignA1148 HourWeatherChemicalDynamicsAirfoil ch andNatural Languagp72 HourWeatherEstimate of HiggsBoson Mass3D PlasmaModeling2D PlasmaModelingIMMO198019902000

Program DescriptionThe Program consists of four integrated components representing thekey areas of high performance computing and communications:High Peiformance Computing Systems (HPCS) the developmentof the underlying technology required for scalable parallelcomputing systems capable of sustaining trillions of operations persecond on large problems.Advanced Software Technology and Algorithms (ASTA) thedevelopment of generic software technology and algorithms forgrand challenge research applications to realize the performancepotential of high performance computing systems in a networkedenvironment.National Research and Education Network (NREN) thedevelopment of a national high speed network to providedistributed computing capability to research and educationalinstitutions and to further advanced research on very high speednetworks and applications.Basic Research and Human Resources (BRHR) support forindividual investigator and multidisciplinary long term researchdrawn from diverse disciplines, including computer science,computer engineering, and computational science and engineering;initiation of activities to significantly increase the pool of trainedpersonnel; and support for efforts leading to accelerated technologytransition.Advances in high performance computing enable advances in almostevery other science and engineering discipline. There is a complex webof research interdependencies among the four components, and eacharea contributes to progress in other areas. Because of thesedependencies, achieving and maintaining balance between the researchcomponents is a primary goal and the most important priority in thecurrent context and environment. The HPCC Program is designed toprovide balanced support both for technology areas includingcomponents, systems, software, and algorithms, and for applications,infrastructure, and human resources to achieve rapid overall researchprogress and productivity.The component activities are planned to produce a succession ofintermediate benefits on the way to meeting the long rangeprogrammatic goals. The HPCC Program builds on Federal programsalready in place, providing additional resources in selected areas.Computational science and engineering grand challenges as illustratedin Figure 2 are the focal points for these efforts.8,

GoalsThe goais of the High Performance Computing and CommunicationsProgram are to:Extend U.S. technological leadership in high performancecomputing and computer communications.Provide wide dissemination and application of the technologiesboth to speed the pace of innovation and to serve the nationaleconomy, national security, education, and the global environment.Spur gains in U.S. productivity and industrial competitiveness bymaking high performance computing and networking technologiesan integral part of the design and production process.These goals will be realized by achieving: computational performanceof one trillion operations per second (1012 ops, or teraops) on a widerange of important applications; development of associated systemsoftware, tools, and improved algorithms for a wide range of problems;a national research network capable of one billion bits per second(109 bits, or gigabits); sufficient production of Ph.D.'s and other trainedprofessionals per year in computational science and engineering toenable effective use and applicAion of these new technologies.StrategyThe goals will be met through coordinated government, industry, anduniversity collaboration to:Support solutions to important scientific and technical challengesthrough a vigorous R&D effort.Reduce the uncertainties to industry for R&D and use of thistechnology through increased cooperation between government,industry, and universities and by the continued use of governmentand governmentfunded facilities as a prototype user for earlycommercial HPCC products.Support the underlying research, network, and computationalinfrastructures on which U.S. high performance computingtechnology is based.Support the U.S. human resource base to meet the needs ofindustry, universities, and government.At the program component level the strategy will: exploit and extendscalable parallelism and engage in intensive software development inHPCS; use common requirements of the grand challenges to foster HPC

software progress in ASTA to strengthen HPC software developmentand coordination; evolve from the current Internet network to the NRENusing a series of testbed systems; and strengthen academic activities incomputer science and computational science and engineering as part ofBRHR,Program Execution StrategyThe strategy is based on the strengths of partnerships among the Federalagencies and other organizations. Major portions of the program will becostshared arid leveraged by the participation of industry anduniversities. This general approach operates well today and providesstrong evidence that the HPCC Program can be successful in the future.The specific elements of the approach are to:Create a balanced, criticalmass program. The program mustachieve sufficient scope and talance among the components. Atechnology program that created extremely fast processors withoutcomparable memory, inputoutput, and mass storage systemswould not succeed. Neither would a program that created powerfulcomputers without adequate software, network access, and capablepeople. Similarly, a program that created only high performancenetworks would not satisfy the increased performance requirementsneeded for grand challenges, The HPCC Program must operate at asufficient scale and coverage of technology areas that the newtechnologies can be effectively applied to grand challengeproblems with acceptable levels of risk. The HPCC Programachieves balance by the extensive participation of experiencedusers, applications developers, and researchers in the HPCCdisciplines throughout the design, development, andimplementation process.Build on agency strengths. The strategy builds on agency strengthsby giving appropriate agencies the responsibility to coordinateactivities for areas of demonstrated capability. It also ensures thatthe strengths of the other agencies are included by integrating theirparticipation in various task areas. DOE, NASA, NSF, DOC(NOAA, NIST), and DOD (DARPA, NSA) have decades ofexperience in applying the world's most powerful computers, andthus provide a valuable perspective on high performancecomputing requirements and applications. NSF has thedemonstrated technical arid operational expeTtise needed fordeploying high performance national networks in the researchcommunity, and is uniquely positioned to support basic research incomputer science, computational science, and other scientific areasthat can benefit from high performance computing in

interdisciplinary programs. DARPA, having pioneeredtechnologies for high performance computing systems andmicroelectronic components, has a strong existing researchprogram in teraops computing and gigabit networking, and offersrapid technology transition into commercial products in support ofDOD science, technology, and applications base. EPA, NIH, andNOAA provide complementary HPCC requirements perspectivesand application bases. NIST has extensive experience in HPCsystems and networks instrumentation arid evaluation, arid providesa means for standards development.Accelerate Technology Transfer. The transfer of technology fromresearch to development and to application can be a very slowprocess due to a number of barriers to the use of new technology:high initial cost, inadequate and userunfriendly software andsystems, and lack of standards. The HPCC Program relies uponsubstantial industry participation to overcome these barriers andyield the benefits derived from moving new technologies toindustry. The strategy accelerates technology transition by using aparticipative development process for each of the task areas, and bystimulating the growth of shared knowledge and capabilities. Anexample of this is the creation of networkaccessible repositories ofscalable HPC software and associated user groups to provide usagefeedback and improvement of the HPC software base.Overcome Barriers. To overcome high costs of creating successivegenerations of high performance computers, the program willemphasize scalable computer designs. Scalable computing andnetworking technologies enable exploratory use with small, 1 svercost prototype systems needed to eventually support the acquisitionof larger systems. The development of userfriendly software andsystems as part of the investment in the HPC software base is amajor, integral part of the itrogram. The central role of missionagencies, and the broad academic scientific research communityinvolvement, ensures that the hardware, software, and networkingtechnology developed will be responsive to user needs. A strategyof cooperative government, industry, and university activities isused to manage and coordinate the coupling of these sectors toachieve maximum synergy.

2. HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ANDCOMMUNICATIONS PROGRAM COMPONENTSTho HPCC Program is composed of four integrated and coordinatedcomponents that are designed to enhance scientific pro

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 336 083 IR 015 102 TITLE Grand Challenges: High Performance Computing and. Communications. The FY 1992 U.S. Research and Development Program. INSTITUTION Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering. and Technology, Washington, DC. PUB