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Legislative and Congressional Actions on High-Performance Computing and Communications

Paul G. Huray

Paul G. Huray is Senior Vice President for Research at the University of South Carolina at Columbia and a consultant for the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy. From 1986 to 1990, he served with the Federal Coordinating Committee on Science, Engineering, and Technology, chairing that body's Committee on Computer Research and Applications, which issued An R&D Strategy for HPC and The Federal HPC Program. He has assisted in the development of Manufacturing Technology Centers for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

I thought I'd begin this presentation by making a few comments about the participation of the U.S. Congress in the High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Initiative. Table 1 shows a chronology of the legislative actions on HPCC. There is nothing in particular that I want to bring to your attention in this figure except the great number of events that have occurred since August 1986. In July 1990, there were several pieces of legislation on the floor of the Senate: S-1067, S-1976, the Senate Armed Services Authorization, and a couple of complementary House bills. Let me outline the legislative situation as of this writing (August 1990).

At the recent meeting of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, I tried to guess where the legislation was headed; Table 2


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Table 1. Legislative History of HPCC Initiative

Date

Designation

Action

Aug 86

PL 99-383

NSF Authorization: OSTP network
report

Nov 87

An R&D Strategy for
HPC

FCCSET: systems, software, NRN,
human resources

Aug 88

Sen. Sci. (CS&T)

Hearing: "Computer Networks and HPC"

Oct 88

S.2918

"The National HPC Technology Act": Strategy + AI, Inf. Sci., and budget

May 89

S.1067

"The HPC Act of 1989"

Jun 89

H. SR&T (SS&T)

Hearing: "U.S. Supercomputer
Industry"

Jun 89

Sen. CS&T

Hearing: "S.1067—NREN"

Jun 89

Gore roundtable

Off-the-record: network carriers

Jul 89

Sen. CS&T

Hearing: "S.1067—Visualization and Software"

Aug 89

H.R.3131

"The National HPC Technology Act of 1989"

Sep 89

The Federal HPC Program

Implementation plan: DARPA, DOE, NASA, NSF

Sep 89

Sen. Sci. (CS&T)

Hearing: "S.1067—Advanced
Computing and Data Management"

Oct 89

H. SR&T (SS&T)

Hearing: "HPC"

Oct 89

H. Telecom. (E&C)

Hearing: "Networks of the Future"

Nov 89

S.1976

"The DOE HPC Act"

Mar 90

Sen. En. R&D (E)

Hearing: "S.1976"

Apr 90

S.1067, amended

"The HPC Act of 1990" (same as
The Federal HPC Program )

Jun 90

S.1976, amended

Puts NREN under DOE

Jul 90

H.R.5072

"The American Technology
Preeminence Act": DOC Authorization, ATP, S/W amend., OSTP

Jul 90

Sen. Armed Serv.

Authorizes $30 M for DARPA in FY 91

Jul 90

Gore roundtable

Off-the-record: HPC users


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Table 2. Legislative Prognosis on HPCC Initiative

Action

Best Guess

Conference Compromise

S.1067, S.1976, Armed Services authorization will pass. Committee report will resolve Senate NREN issue. H.R.5072 or H.R.3131 will pass. House will accept full Senate bill.

Consolidation

Bill could attract ornaments or become a subset of other S&T legislation.

Appropriations

Budget committee will single out HPCC for a line item with a "special place in the FY 91 budget," but appropriations will fall short of authorization because of general budget constraints.

Education

Senate hearings will be held to place HPCC in an educational context. Human interfaces (sound, interactive graphics, multimedia) will be considered in view of previous failure of computer-aided instruction.

Business

Senate hearings will be held to consider the value of HPCC to the manufacturing environment and to corporate network services.

shows what could happen. S-1067 and S-1976 have passed out of committee and are on the floor for compromise. Some of the people attending this conference are participating in the compromise process.

There are some issues to be resolved, especially issues related to the National Research and Education Network (NREN), but it is our belief that these pieces of Senate legislation will pass in some form and that the complementary legislation will also pass in the House, although the language is quite different in some respects. However, we have some assurance that the House will accept the Senate bill when it's eventually compromised.

There are a couple of other dangers, however, in the consolidation process. What might happen to these pieces of legislation? As indicated in Table 2, they could attract ornaments from other activities, or they could become a subset of some other science and technology legislation. When I asked Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee what he thought might happen, he said that apart from issues related to abortion and the Panama Canal, he couldn't imagine what might be added.

The appropriations process, of course, is the key activity. The bills that are on the floor of the House and Senate now are just authorizations. But when it comes budget time—time to actually cut those dollars—we believe that HPCC will have a special status. The point is that there are


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still plenty of opportunities for this initiative to fall apart in the Congress. In fact, some ideologues would like that to happen. I think, on the other hand, that we will see a few HPCC additions in the FY 1991 budget produced by Congress, and certainly there will be a special place in the FY 1992 budget coming out of the Executive Office.

Table 2 also indicates that more hearings will be held on HPCC. I realize that probably half the people in this audience have participated in these hearings, but I would guess that the next hearings would be associated with education, probably with the network and its usefulness as a tool for education. I would also guess that the following hearing would concentrate on business and how the manufacturing sector will benefit from a national network. Because we were asked to discuss specific topics, I'm going to address the rest of my remarks to the usefulness of the HPCC Initiative to the business sector.

To start, I want to note a very important key word in the title of the program (see Figure 1), the word "federal." The word "federal" has allowed this initiative to go forward without becoming industrial policy. At one point, that word was "national," but we realized we were potentially running into trouble because we wanted to retain an emphasis on economic competitiveness without crossing the political line into industrial policy.

Figure 1.
Cover of the report issued by the Office of Science and Technology
Policy.


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Three goals were stated in the development of the High Performance Computing Initiative, as the HPCC Initiative is also known:

• maintain and extend U.S. leadership in high-performance computing, especially by encouraging U.S. sources of production;

• encourage innovation through diffusion and assimilation into the science and engineering communities; and

• support U.S. economic competitiveness and productivity through greater utilization of networked high-performance computing in analysis, design, and manufacturing.

These goals are getting close to the political line of industrial policy. It is the third of these goals I want to focus on during my presentation.

I think everyone who participated in this process understood the relevance of this initiative to the productivity of the country. In order to examine that potential, I decided to take a look at what might become a more extended timetable than the three phases of the national network that are listed in HPCC Initiative documents.

As you probably know, phases 1, 2, and 3 of NREN are addressed in the document that covers growth in performance of the network and growth in the number of institutions. We're probably already into NREN-2 in terms of some of those parameters. But many of us believe that the big payoffs will occur when business begins to participate in the national network and gains access to high-performance computing. Figure 2 suggests that large numbers of institutions could become part of the network once the business sector participates.

Figure 2.
Extended timetable for a National Research and Education Network (NREN).


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How will that happen? One way is through a program that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) runs. It is a program that I'm very familiar with because it takes place partly in South Carolina.

In 1988 Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, as shown in Table 3. That act was very controversial because it had all kinds of issues that it dealt with—unfair trade, antidumping, foreign investments, export control, intellectual property. But one of the activities it established was the development of regional centers for the transfer of manufacturing technology, and this activity is intimately connected with the national network.

As shown in Table 4, there are currently three centers that participate in this manufacturing technology center program. One is at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, one is in Cleveland at the Cleveland Area Manufacturing Program, and one is at the University of South Carolina. The South Carolina-based initiative provides a process for delivering technology to the work force; and this is quite different than the normal Ph.D. education process. We're delivering technology to small and medium-size companies, initially only in South Carolina but later throughout the 14 southeastern states in a political consortium called the Southern Growth Policies Board.

This technology involves fairly straightforward computation, that is, workstation-level activity. But in some cases the technology involves numerically intensive computing. Table 5 shows the kind of technologies that we're delivering in South Carolina. The small-to-medium-size companies range in capabilities from a blacksmith's shop up to a very sophisticated business. But we're having terrific impact. Nationwide, the number of computer scientists has increased by two orders of magnitude since 1983, to 60,000 in 1989. In 1989, we trained 10,000 workers in the technologies shown in Table 6 as part of this program. Those are the workers trained in one state by one of three manufacturing technology centers—a number that is expected to expand to five in 1991. This will be a model for a technology extension program for the whole United States, in which many people in the work force will have access not just to workstations but to high-performance computing, as well.

As an example, Figure 3 shows the network that we're currently using to distribute technology electronically. This is a state-funded network aided by Digital Equipment Corporation. This is an example of a local initiative that is fitting into the national program. There are 26 institutions participating in this consortium, mostly technical colleges whose instructors have previously trained many of the work force in discrete parts manufacturing activities around the state.


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Table 3. Omnibus Trade and Competiveness Act of 1988


•  Tools to open foreign markets and help U.S. exporters (examples):

– Equitable Trade Policy

– Antidumping Measures

– Foreign Investment

– Export Control

– Intellectual Property Protection


• Initiative to boost U.S. industry in world markets (NIST responsibilities)

– Assist State Technology Programs

– Implement Advanced Technology Program

– Establish Clearing-House for State Technology Programs

– Establish Regional Centers for Transfer of Manufacturing Technology

 

Table 4. Characteristic Descriptions of the Existing NIST Manufacturing Technology Centers (MTCs)

Northeastern MTC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:
Focuses on hardening of federal software for commercialization.
Features excellent engineering and enjoys support of industry vendors.
"The Shrink-Wrap Center."

Great Lakes MTC at Cleveland Area Manufacturing Program:
Focuses on real-time measurement and metal-cutting machinery.
Promotes a large toolmaking base in the Cleveland area.
"The Manufacturing Resource Facility."

Southeastern MTC at the University of South Carolina:
Focuses on workforce training through existing technical institutions.
Addresses company needs, including training, in 14 southeastern states.
"The Delivery Center."

 

Table 5. SMTC Technical Emphasis

 

Computer-Aided Design

Robotics

Computer-Aided Manufacturing

Metrology

Computer-Aided Engineering

Integration Cells

Numerically Controlled Machines

Inventory Control

Advanced Machine Tools

Quality Control


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Table 6. SMTC: General Successes

 

• Training approximately 10,000 workers in

– CAD

– CAM

– CAE

– Piping Design

– Geometric Dimensioning/Tolerancing

– Info Windows (IBM)

– Prog Logic CON

– SPC

– TQC

– ZENIX

• Implementing manufacturing-company-needs assessment

• Establishing technical colleges network

• Establishing center of competence for manufacturing technology

• Transferring numerous technologies from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Digital Equipment Corporation

We estimate that more than 80% of the commerce in South Carolina is within 25 miles of one of these institutions, so linking them into a corporate network is going to be reasonably straightforward. We've initiated that linking process, and we believe we're going to bring about a cultural change with the help of a manufacturing network.

One of the things we are doing, for example, is bringing up an electronic bulletin board, which is essentially going to be a bidding board on which we have electronic specifications for subcontracts from the Department of Defense or large corporations. We will let those small corporations call the bulletin board and see what's up today for bid, with a deadline perhaps at three o'clock. The small businessman will look at the electronic specifications for a particular subcontract, which might be a fairly large data set displayed on a high-quality workstation. The businessman will ask himself if he can manufacture that item in a numerical fashion quickly for the subcontract bid. In one scenario, before the three o'clock deadline comes, the businessman will bid on the project, the bid will be let at five o'clock, the manufacturing takes place that night, and delivery happens the next morning. I think that's not an unrealistic vision of a future manufacturing infrastructure aided by a national network.


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Figure 3.
South Carolina State Technical Colleges' wide-area network plan.

The companies that are currently participating in our program are, for the most part, using 1950s technology, and they are just now coming into a competitive environment. Unfortunately, they don't even know they're competing in most cases. But we can see such a network program extending to other states in the southeastern United States, as shown in Figure 4. The plan for NIST is to clone the manufacturing technology centers throughout other states in the country. We can imagine eventually 20,000 small- to medium-sized companies participating in such a program—20,000 businesses with employees of perhaps, in the case of small businesses, 50 persons or less.

We need to remember that these small corporations produce the majority of the balance of trade for the United States. Seventy-five per cent of our manufactured balance of trade comes from small-or medium-sized companies, these are the people we need to impact. I have described a mechanism to initiate such a program. I believe that this program can address the infrastructure of manufacturing and productivity in the country, as well as accomplish some of the very sophisticated projects we are doing in academia and in our national laboratories.


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Figure 4.
Southeastern Manufacturing Technology Network.


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