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OCR for page 28
The Role of Government in Supercomputing
The federal government has been involved in the development and advancement of supercomputing
since the advent of computers themselves While the precise mechanism and level of support have varied
over time, there has been a long-standing federal commitment to encourage the technical progress and
diffusion of high-performance computing systems (some of this history is summarized in Chapter 2~.
Economic and policy analysis emphasizes several broad justifications for government involvement in
technology development; the key justifications that apply to supercomputing are outlined below.
GOVERNMENT AS A LEADING CUSTOMER
Much technological innovation is (at least initially) directed toward applications dominated by
government involvement and purchasing. Most notably, defense needs have often been the specific
setting in which new technologies including supercomputing are first developed and applied. Even
when commercial firms are purchasing or exploiting supercomputer technology, as in the pharmaceutical
and biotechnology industries, governments are often the largest single customer for the resulting
innovations (e.g., through the Medicare and Medicaid programs in the United States or national health
insurance programs in other countries). The federal government remains the single largest purchaser of
supercomputers in the world, for mission-oriented tasks ranging from national security to health to
climate modeling.
Some government missions may require specifications that are peculiar to the individual applications.
In such cases, it may be important for the relevant federal agencies and research labs to be closely
involved in the associated R&D (including prototyping), even when the research and development are
carried out in the private sector.
In the United States, Japan, and elsewhere, the majority of supercomputers have been purchased
directly or indirectly using government funds, and the committee has no evidence that this pattern is
likely to change in the foreseeable future. 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 investments in
IDA estimates that the high-end HPC market in the United States has been around $1 billion (~$200 million)
per year since 1994. The U.S. government (including DOD, the national laboratories, and classified programs)
spends roughly $700 or $800 million per year (and this spending has been relatively flat for the last 10 years).
SOURCE: Debra Goldfarb, IDC HPC industry analyst, presentation to the committee on May 23, 2003.
28
OCR for page 29
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENTINSUPERCOMPUTING
supercomputing technology so as to guarantee that the technology progresses at a rate and in a direction
that serve government missions.
NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS
U.S. government users require assured, secure, and reliable access to supercomputing capabilities to
ensure that critical national security requirements are met. Supercomputers are used to develop
intelligence gathering equipment (e.g., better antennas), to find important information through massive
data mining, and for cryptography and cryptanalysts. They are used to design better weapons, airplanes,
and tanks as well as for battlef~eld-related calculations that must be carried out very quickly. For
example, the timely calculation of areas of enemy territory where enemy radars are not able to spot our
airplanes (as was done during the first Gulf war) can be crucial. Design and refurbishment of nuclear
weapons depends critically on supercomputing calculations, as does the design of next-generation
armament for the Army's Future Combat System.
29
It is likely that supercomputing will be increasingly important to homeland security. Examples
include micrometeorology analysis to combat biological terrorism and computer forensic analysis of
terrorist bombings.
The federal government must be able to guarantee that such systems do what they are intended to do
with no harmful side effects from, for instance, malicious insertion of incorrect calculations. It must
guarantee that supercomputers are available to U.S. security agencies with no hindrance and must be able
to restrict access to some supercomputing technologies abroad. All in all, the government has an
Incentive to ensure a strong supercomputing technology base in the United States.
MARKET FORCES
Economists are generally reluctant to see government intervene in highly competitive markets, where
the costs of disruption to well-functioning and efficient resource allocation mechanisms are likely to be
high. However, in many circumstances, market-based incentives for scientific discovery and innovation
are likely to be insufficient. Because innovators often are unable to capture the full value of their
inventions, market forces alone typically will bring less innovation than is worthwhile from society's
perspective. Typically, underinvestment is greatest for basic research, fundamental scientific discoveries,
or technologies that serve as stepping-stones for follow-on research by others.
A number of computing innovations first implemented in supercomputers (for example, instruction
lookahead, multiple arithmetic units, multiple instruction buffers and data operators, pipelining,
programmable I/O processors)2 played an important role in shaping the architecture and performance of
mainstream computers today (from workstations to personal computers). Initiatives funded in the context
of supercomputers have influenced the ability to commercialize innovations, from workstation
architecture to the latest Intel CPU. Machines equivalent in power to the supercomputer of 15 years ago
that cost millions of dollars can now be purchased online for less than $1,000. The dramatic decrease in
price for the same performance is due to continuing advances in semiconductor technology. However
2For historical compilations of these and other major innovations in computer architecture, see Harold S. Stone
et al., 1980, "Hardware Systems," in What Can Be Automated? The Computer Science and Engineering Research
Study, Bruce W. Arden, ea., Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 3 1 9 and 320; C. Gordon Bell and Allen Newell,
1971, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples, New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, fig. 2c, p. 45, p. 71; C.
Gordon Bell and Allen Newell, 1982, Computer Structures: Principles and Examples, New York, N.Y.: McGraw-
Hill, p.393. These and other sources have been drawn together and annotated with additional information in K.
Flamm, 1988, Creating the Computer: Government, Industry, and High Technology, Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press. pp. 260-269.
OCR for page 30
30
THE FUTURE OF SUPERCOMPUTING: ANINTERIMREPORT
the architecture of the chip and the software that drives it are based on the supercomputers of 15 years
ago.
Supercomputing technology created with government funds has found its way into commercial
computers and, in turn, has been used by private firms in basic research and to improve the design of
products, including airplanes, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals. Supercomputing is essential for
fundamental and applied research in materials science, earth science, life sciences, and so on. It is
interesting to note that the Earth Simulator system that is described earlier is dedicated exclusively to the
geosciences. The availability of such a powerful too! is likely to accelerate research in those disciplines
by leading, for example, to a better understanding (and, hence, better prediction) of climate change and
earthquakes. The value of such accelerated progress appears to be immense. It would seem, however,
that only a small share of all the benefits is being captured by those involved in the initial stages of their
development.
In summary, keeping the U.S. supercomputing industry at the technological cutting edge is vital for
the security interests of the United States. In light of this imperative, there are several economic
arguments that might justify continued government funding for supercomputing R&D rather than reliance
on the marketplace alone.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
government missions
