Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure (1995) / Chapter Skim
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The High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative
The High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative
Pages 28-52
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computing and communications research and development since 1989. It became official in 1991 with Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
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Grand Challenges A third original objective related to applications of high-performance computing and communications technologies: to define and attack Grand Challenge problems. High-performance
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Expanded Objectives The set of HPCCI objectives has been expanded through legislative and agency activities. The High Performance Computing Act of 1991, Public Law 102-194, broadened the applications concerns to include the so-called National Challenges explorations of high-performance computing and communications technology for applications in such areas as education, libraries, manufacturing, and health care.
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and/or applications that call for significant technology development. Within the computer science and engineering field, there has been considerable debate over the degree to which computing research should be driven by applications concerns as opposed to intrinsic computer science concerns, given that both approaches to research have historically yielded considerable spinoffs to other sciences and the economy.'8 To computer scientists and engineers, HPCCI is viewed as the first major federal initiative that emphasizes the science of computing and communications, which is addressed in conjunction with exploration of problems involving other fields of science and engineering, loosely aggregated as computational science.
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to state-of-the-art computer resources and to expertise to help researchers learn how to use them, the HPCCI has also enabled research in a wide range of science and engineering disciplines to be performed that would not otherwise have been possible. Appendix D fists relevant examples from the Grand Challenge activities, and Appendix E points out instances related to the NSF supercomputer center activities, which fall under the HPCCI umbrella despite having some separate roots.
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Their work has provided vendors with key insights into the limitations of their architectures.26 Although these users' requirements are more specialized than those typical of the commercial market for parallel systems, such collaborative work has contributed to enhancing the development and application of high-performance computing and communications technologies. For example, astrophysicists' work on problems in cosmology has stimulated improved handling of fast Fourier transforms in high-performance system compilers that has also benefited commercial applications of seismology in oil exploration.
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In the process, they helped to bridge the gap in perspective and emphasis between the computing and communications research communities.
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As in the case of the gigabit testbeds, for example, such work can provide proofs of concept that encourage private investment by lowering risks. Five Gigabit Testbed Projects: Collaboration and Impact The gigabit testbeds provide a case study of how to achieve progress through cross-sectoral, developer-user collaboration to advance high-performance computing and communications technologies.
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The increasing linkage between the HPCCT and information infrastructure can be seen in the "Blue Books," the principal public documentation of the purpose, scope, participation, budget, achievements, and prospects of the HPCCI.34 Box A.2 in Appendix A outlines the evolution of HPCCI goals as articulated in the Blue Books. Box A.3 indicates the broadening of focus from science to other kinds of applications and drivers of high-performance computing and communications technologies.
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The Internet and efforts associated with the development of digital libraries already illustrate the importance of high-performance computing and communications to a broad set of information infrastructure capabilities. Greater attention to information infrastructure does not imply that performance should be abandoned.
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is acknowledged as "helping develop the technological foundation upon which the NlI will be built," as a prelude to the articulation of several priorities under the broad goal of"harnessing information technology," one of six broad goals.36 See Box 2.3 for an illustrative discussion of how telemedicine needs, for example, can help to drive high-performance computing and communications technology development and deployment, and how the HPCCI can foster paradigm shifts in application domains. Evolving Research Directions and Relevance for the Information :Infrastructure The public debate over information infrastructure is at heart a debate over how to make computing and communications systems easier to use, more effective, and more productive.
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40 : :::: : ~ BOX-~2.~3' ~Telemedicine~:~ An~ Ex~ample of ~ ~' ~ 2~ ' .~ .
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services to support defense-relevant applications.37 Common to these various efforts is the need for research to enhance such critical information infrastructure middleware capabilities as security and reliability; the basic research underlying many of these concepts had been done by high-performance computing and communications researchers funded mainly by ARPA. In addition, it is important to advance true communications research, including such fundamental areas as transmission, switching, coding and channel access protocols realized in electronic, optical, and wireless technologies, as well as basic computer networking research in such areas as internetworking protocols, transport protocols, flow and congestion control, and so on.
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ARPA, for example, is devoting attention to software and tools to support design and simulation for development of defense systems; its emphases on security and scalable systems both involve substantial effort relating to software.39 This evolution should continue and indeed accelerate. Practical experience with the HPCCT and the volatile policy context both suggest that the ideal research agenda for high-performance computing and communications should be driven by strategic priorities, but focused more broadly than on just those priorities.
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For example, better weather prediction would save an enormous amount of money and should be carried out on high-performance computers even if millions of people do not have them. The lower end of tile market will grow as parallel processing vendors reposition their products, addressing broader industrial and commercial needs for information storage and analysis, multimedia servers, data mining, and intelligent transactions systems.4' Observers within the computing and communications research communities, including members of this committee, are concerned about the impact of computer and communications industrial restructuring.
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The.Case of.~(::ommunica.tions R&D. The HPCCI~currently includes a relatively~modest~bue vigorous~communications research Program.
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As to diversity of mechanisms, the multiple-Pi/multiple field category is epitomized by the Grand Challenge teams, which involve multiple institutions attacking frontier research problems with multiple-year horizons, often drawing on access to the leading-edge machines in the NSF supercomputer centers and benefiting from interactions between computer scientists and computational scientists.45 The joint industry-government-academia experiment category is currently epitomized by the gigabit network testbeds. More specifically, NASA's FY 1995 HPCCI effort includes integrated multidisciplinary computational aerospace vehicle design and multidisciplinary modeling and analysis of earth and space science phenomena (HoIcomb, 19941.
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: : : .. :1 The HPCCI coordination focus lies in the National Coordination Office for HighPerformance Computing and Communications, which was established in September 1992.
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As part of its coordinating function, the NCO gathers information about the HPCCI activities of different agencies and helps to make this information available to Congress, industry, and the public. Since its formation, the NCO has produced the impressive FY 1994 and FY 1995 Blue Books as visible manifestations of its coordination efforts.
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The NCO director participates in both CIC and HPPCIT. Planning, coordination, and management for the HPCCI have been further confounded by the rise of additional bodies to address technology policy and other policy relating to the NII initiative.
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1. The substance of these components is outlined in the HPCCI's annual Blue Books; see FCCSET (1991, 1993, 2.
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. The committee notes that if trends at the NSF supercomputer centers continue, the MetaCenter (which pools some of the centers' resources)
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26. For example, as a result of detailed interactions between a high-performance computing and communications vendor and a staff member of an NSF supereomputer center, a Grand Challenge computer code uncovered previously undiscovered hardware bugs in newly released microprocessors installed in a sealable supereomputer at the center.
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In comparison to their NSF Cooperative Agreement level of $16 million per year, this has a small impact. Indeed, the situation is even worse, since a typical NSF supercomputer center receives only half its annual budget from the NSF Cooperation Agreement, the other half coming from state and university matching funds, other grants, and equipment donations by computer vendors.
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