High Performance Computing = US Priority
On July 29, 2015, President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI). The order is intended to sustain and enhance (the US’s) scientific, technological, and economic leadership position in HPC research, development, and deployment through a coordinated Federal strategy.” The strategy contains the four following principles.
- The United States must deploy and apply new HPC technologies broadly for economic competitiveness and scientific discovery.
- The United States must foster public-private collaboration, relying on the respective strengths of government, industry, and academia to maximize the benefits of HPC.
- The United States must adopt a whole-of-government approach that draws upon the strengths of and seeks cooperation among all executive departments and agencies with significant expertise or equities in HPC while also collaborating with industry and academia.
- The United States must develop a comprehensive technical and scientific approach to transition HPC research on hardware, system software, development tools, and applications efficiently into development and, ultimately, operations.
HPC Goes Mainstream
HPC is indeed becoming more mainstream and this is a further sign. Over the past decade, the acronym has spread from the traditional spheres of academia, research, and science to the boardroom whose interest has been piqued by the revenue potential of fast, instant data.
The fourth principle of the President’s strategy is the most interesting, as it’s a call-to-arms for HPC to be operationalized. This will require a serious amount of effort between traditionally silo’ed organizations and departments, but as we’ve seen other governments and NGOs devote public resources to HPC, it’s not just an option, it’s an imperative to remain competitive.
