Software Environment

IMP, Fortran, and C are the main languages used in HPC at NSA. Although a general Ada support function is running in the agency (in compliance with Department of Defense requirements to support Ada), HPC users are not enthusiastic about bringing up Ada compilers on these systems. NSA plans to eliminate IMP because it has little vectorizing capability, and the user has to deal with vectorizing.

Faster compilers are needed, particularly a parallelizing C compiler. HPC also requires full-screen editors, as well as interactive debuggers that allow partial debugging of software. Upgrading network support is a slow process because of the number of systems involved and new protocols and interfaces. Upgrading on-line documentation, likewise, has been slow. Software support lags three to five years behind the

introduction of new hardware technology, and we don't seem to be gaining ground.