Getting Up to Speed The Future of Supercomputing (2005) / Chapter Skim
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8 A Policy Framework
8 A Policy Framework
Pages 192-205
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From page 192... ...
Although the mechanisms and levels of support have varied over time, there has been a long-standing federal commitment to encourage technical progress and the diffusion of high-performance computing systems. (Key aspects of this history are summarized in Chapter 3.)
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From page 193... ...
For example, the justification for the original ASCI program was to promote supercomputing technology not for its own sake but for the sake of ensuring confidence in the nuclear stockpile in the absence of nuclear testing. DOE tried to achieve this objective by two means: The aggressive procurement of supercomputers throughout the 1990s and funding of the PathForward development program, which attempted to accelerate technical progress in the types of supercomputers used by the ASCI program.
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From page 194... ...
As the social custodian of well-defined government missions and the largest and most aggressive customer for new technology related to these missions, the government has an incentive to ensure appropriate and effective funding for innovative supercomputing investments so as to guarantee that the technology progresses at a rate and in a direction that serve the missions. SUPERCOMPUTER TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS AS PUBLIC GOODS The public goods nature of supercomputer investment is a second broad rationale for government intervention.
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From page 195... ...
While such initiatives would benefit all supercomputer users, no individual programmer or team has sufficient incentives to develop such complementary software and interface technologies. Similar to the more comprehensive approach to software development that is being attempted in recent projects such as the Earth System Modeling Framework at multiple institutions, overcoming these deficiencies requires either government intervention to provide direct support for the development of these technologies or a mechanism for coordinated action across groups involved in supercomputing technology.2 POTENTIAL COSTS OF GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION Because the federal government is the main purchaser of supercomputing technology, and supercomputer hardware and software development is a public good, the federal government has played a leading and crucial role in the development and procurement of supercomputing technology.
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From page 196... ...
Second, individual firms and vendors supporting specific supercomputer architectures may attempt to exert political influence over the procurement process itself. When such rent seeking occurs, government purchasing decisions may be based on the political influence of a firm rather than on its ability to meet the needs of government agencies in terms of performance and cost.
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From page 197... ...
Such programs are particularly effective when the government would like to encourage basic research in specific areas but has limited information or knowledge about the precise nature of the outputs from research in that area. For example, grants and subsidies to the supercomputer center at the University of Illinois during the early 1990s were the principal form of support underlying the development of the Mosaic browser technology, an enormously beneficial innovation whose precise form, features, or impact could not have been forecast prior to its invention.4 Alternatively, R&D tax credits can provide important incentives for innovative investment.
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From page 198... ...
International joint ventures are increasingly common. For example, in 1992, Toshiba, IBM, and Siemens announced they would collaborate in developing advanced memory chips, and on the same day, Fujitsu and Advanced Micro Devices said they would jointly manufacture flash memories, which are used for data storage instead of disk drives.
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From page 199... ...
Indeed, while overall government science and technology expenditures are predominantly funded through grants and tax credits, a high share of supercomputer investment is implemented through procurement contracts with private firms. Under ideal conditions, procurement allows the government to acquire specific types of advanced technology while taking advantage of competition between firms on the basis of cost and performance.
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From page 200... ...
The single firm gains from economies of scale in producing more units. However, a single vendor will exercise market power, setting a price above marginal cost and hence reducing demand for its product.
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From page 201... ...
COMPETING GOVERNMENT OBJECTIVES Overall, optimal government policy toward supercomputing must therefore balance competing objectives, including serving the requirements of mission-oriented agencies and encouraging technological progress more broadly. As a practical matter, these objectives are balanced through the procurement process, which is discussed in detail in Chapter 9.
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The government intentionally layers the procurement process with enormous amounts of auditing (and other legal constraints) in order to eliminate corruption.
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From page 203... ...
government policies affect international trade, such as an tidumping laws, subsidies for sales in third markets, restrictions on imports (quotas or tariffs, if allowed under international agreements) , and exports (export restrictions)
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From page 204... ...
173.08 NEC 454.00 All others 313.54 On September 26, 1997, a second U.S. agency, the International Trade Commission, made the dumping charge final with its determination that Cray Research had suffered material injury, even though NCAR argued that the hardware Cray proposed did not meet its minimum specifications.3 The punitive tariffs of between 173 percent and 454 percent on all supercomputers imported from Japan established a barrier so high that it effectively prevented imports and excluded Japanese supercomputers from the U.S.
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From page 205... ...
development funding, has Cray Research suc cessfully developed the X-1, a vector supercomputer comparable in power to those produced in Japan. Commodity-based systems are now increasingly used for weather simu lations, since the problem has become one of capacity.
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