1983 Conference Summary

In August of 1983, at the previous conference, we recognized that there is a compelling need for more and faster supercomputers. The Japanese , in fact, have shown that they have a national goal in supercomputation and can achieve effective cooperation between government, industry, and academia in

their country. I think the Japanese shocked us a little in 1983, and we were a bit complacent then. However, I believe we are now guided more by our needs, our capabilities, and the idea of having a consistent, balanced program with other sciences and industry. So I think we've reached a level of maturity that is considerably greater than we had in 1983. I think U.S. vendors are now beginning, as a result of events that have gone on during this period, to be very serious about massively parallel systems, or what we now tend to call scalable parallel systems.

The only evident approach to achieve large increases over current supercomputer speeds is through massively parallel systems. However, there are some interesting ideas in other areas like optics that are exciting. But I think for this next decade we do have to look very hard at the scalable parallel systems.

We don't know how to use parallel architectures very well. The step from a few processors to large numbers is a difficult problem. It is still a challenge, but we now know a great deal more about using parallel processors on real problems. It is still very true that much work is required on algorithms, languages, and software to facilitate the effective use of parallel architectures .

It is also still true that the vendors need a larger market for supercomputers to sustain an accelerated development program . I think that may be a more difficult problem now than it was in 1983 because the cost of developing supercomputers has grown considerably. However, the world market is really not that big—it is approximately a $1 billion-per-year market. In short, the revenue base is still small.

Potential supercomputer applications may be far greater than current usage indicates. In fact, I think that the number of potential applications is enormous and continues to grow.

U.S. computer companies have a serious problem buying fast, bipolar memory chips in the U.S. We have to go out of the country for a lot of that technology. I think our companies have tried to develop U.S. sources more recently, and there has been some success in that. Right now, there is considerable interest in fast bipolar SRAMs. It will be interesting to see if we can meet that need in the U.S.

Packaging is a major part of the design effort. As speed increases, you all know, packaging gets to be a much tougher problem in almost a nonlinear way. That is still a very difficult problem.

Supercomputers are systems consisting of algorithms, languages, software, architecture, peripherals, and devices. They should be developed as systems that recognize the critical interaction of all the parts. You have to deal with a whole system if you're going to build something that's usable.

Collaboration among government, industry, and academia on supercomputer matters is essential to meet U.S. needs. The type of collaboration that we have is important. We need to find collaboration that is right for the U.S. and takes advantage of the institutions and the work patterns that we are most comfortable with. As suggested by Senator Jeff Bingaman in his presentation during this session, the U.S. needs national supercomputer goals and a strategic plan to reach those goals .