[Congressional Bills 107th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 193 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







107th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                 S. 193

    To authorize funding for Advanced Scientific Research Computing 
  Programs at the Department of Energy for fiscal years 2002 through 
                     2006, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                            January 29, 2001

 Mr. Bingaman  (for himself, Mr. Craig, Mr. Schumer, and Mrs. Murray) 
introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the 
               Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
    To authorize funding for Advanced Scientific Research Computing 
  Programs at the Department of Energy for fiscal years 2002 through 
                     2006, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as ``Department of Energy Advanced Scientific 
Computing Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    The Congress finds the following:
            (1) The Department of Energy and its Office of Science 
        research programs has played an important role in the 
        development of high performance computing, networking, and 
        information technology. These capabilities have been readily 
        accessible to the U.S. scientific community for a diverse set 
        of grand challenge scientific computational problems. 
        Contributions by the Department include pioneering the concept 
        of remote, interactive access to supercomputers (developing the 
        first interactive operating system for supercomputers, 
        establishing the first national supercomputer center); 
        developing the mathematical foundations for high performance 
        computing with numerical linear algebra libraries used 
        worldwide; leading the transition to massively parallel 
        supercomputing by developing software to allow processors to 
        communicate with each other; and contributing to the 
        development of the Internet with software that dramatically 
        speeds up the transmission of messages.
            (2) The Department of Energy's Office of Science's 
        contributions to networking and information technology have 
        played a key role in its ability to accomplish its statutory 
        mission to promote the basic sciences critical to the Nation's 
        energy future through the development of remote access to its 
        shared computing and experimental facilities. Particular users 
        of the computing facilities have been high energy physicists 
        who model electromagnetic fields and beam dynamics in 
        accelerators, materials scientists who model and design 
        materials using computational techniques, chemists who model 
        the chemical processes involved in combustion, atmospheric 
        scientists who model global climate patterns, geologists who 
        model ground transport of fluids and waste, and biologists who 
        want to predict protein structures. Continued accomplishments 
        in these areas will be needed to continue to carry out future 
        DOE missions.
            (3) The Department of Energy has unique multi-disciplinary 
        facilities for advancing basic and applied science which 
        include the high energy and nuclear laboratories, neutron 
        sources and synchrotron facilities, and advanced computing and 
        communications facilities such as the National Energy Research 
        Scientific Computing Center, the Advanced Computing Research 
        Facilities, and the Energy Sciences Network. Each facility when 
        networked to share large amounts of scientific data will better 
        be able to advance the fundamental understanding in their 
        respective areas as well as the overall networking and 
        information technology infrastructure for the Nation.
            (4) Many challenges are associated with modeling complex 
        physical, chemical, and biological phenomena, especially on 
        massively parallel computers with peak speeds in hundreds of 
        teraflops (100 trillion arithmetic operations per second). 
        These challenges include the management and analysis of 
        petabyte-scale data sets. A program to address these challenges 
        will require multi-disciplinary collaborations between 
        theoretical and computational scientists, computer scientists, 
        and applied mathematicians at universities, national 
        laboratories, and industry. Such a program will enhance the 
        ability of DOE to meet its mission goals and advance the state 
        of the art for the U.S. economic and industrial base in the 
        fields of energy, geology, genetics, chemical processing, 
        electronics and transportation.
            (5) Solving the challenges facing the Department of Energy 
        in developing and using high-performance computing, networking, 
        and information technologies will be of immense value to the 
        Nation. Potential benefits include: reliable prediction of the 
        Earth's climate as well as the performance of energy systems; 
        understanding aging and fatigue effects in materials crucial to 
        energy and transportation systems; promoting energy-efficient 
        chemical production through improved chemical processes, 
        including rational catalyst design; predicting the structure 
        and functions of the proteins coded by DNA and their response 
        to chemical and radiation damage; designing more efficient 
        combustion systems; and understanding turbulent flow in plasmas 
        in energy and advanced materials applications.

SEC. 3. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY PROGRAM.

    (a) Establishment.--The Secretary of Energy, through the Office of 
Science, shall support a program to advance the Nation's computing 
capability across a diverse set of grand challenge computationally 
based science problems.
    (b) Duties of the Office of Science.--In carrying out the program 
under this Act, the Director of the Office shall--
            (1) advance basic science through computation by developing 
        software to solve grand challenge science problems on new 
        generations of computing platforms,
            (2) enhance the foundations for scientific computing by 
        developing the basic mathematical and computing systems 
        software needed to take full advantage of the computing 
        capabilities of computers with peak speeds of 100 teraflops or 
        more, some of which may be unique to the scientific problem of 
        interest,
            (3) enhance national collaboratory and networking 
        capabilities by developing software to integrate geographically 
        separated researchers into effective research teams and to 
facilitate access to and movement and analysis of large (petabyte) data 
sets, and
            (4) maintain a robust scientific computing hardware 
        infrastructure to ensure that the computing resources needed to 
        address DOE missions are available; explore new computing 
        approaches and technologies that promise to advance scientific 
        computing.
Within the funds authorized to be appropriated pursuant to this Act, 
the amounts specified under this section shall, subject to 
appropriations, be available for the above research activities.
    (c) High-Performance Computing Act Program.--Section 203(a) of the 
High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 (15 U.S.C. 5523(a)) is amended--
            (1) in paragraph (3), by striking ``and'';
            (2) in paragraph (4), by striking the period and inserting 
        ``; and''; and
            (3) by adding after paragraph (4) the following: ``(5) 
        conduct an integrated program of research, development, and 
        provision of facilities to develop and deploy to scientific and 
        technical users the high-performance computing and 
        collaboration tools needed to fulfill the statutory missions of 
        the Department of Energy in conducting basic and applied energy 
        research.''.
    (d) Coordination With the DOE National Nuclear Security Agency 
Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative and Other National Computing 
Programs.--The Secretary shall ensure through the Director of the 
Office of Science, that this program, to the extent feasible, is 
integrated and consistent with the National Nuclear Security Agency's 
Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative. The Secretary through the 
Director of the Office of Science shall ensure that this program is 
integrated and consistent with other national efforts related to 
advanced scientific computing for science and engineering.
    (e) Merit Review Required.--All grants, contracts, cooperative 
agreements, or other financial assistance awards under this Act shall 
be made only after independent merit and peer review.

SEC. 4. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

    (a) Total Authorization.--The following sums are authorized to be 
appropriated to the Secretary of Energy, to remain available until 
expended, for the purposes of carrying out this Act:
            (1) $250,000,000 for fiscal year 2002.
            (2) $285,000,000 for fiscal year 2003.
            (3) $300,000,000 for fiscal year 2004.
            (4) $310,000,000 for fiscal year 2005.
    (b) High-End Computing R&D.--Of the funds under subsection (a), the 
following sums are authorized to be appropriated to carry out high-end 
computing R&D in section 3(b) (1) and (2):
            (1) $39,500,000 for fiscal year 2002.
            (2) $45,000,000 for fiscal year 2003.
            (3) $45,000,000 for fiscal year 2004.
            (4) $50,000,000 for fiscal year 2005.
            (5) $50,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
    (c) Large-Scale Computing and Collaboratory Research.--Of the funds 
under subsection (a), the following sums are authorized to be 
appropriated to carry out large-scale computing and collaboratory 
research in section 3(b)(3):
            (1) $54,500,000 for fiscal year 2002.
            (2) $57,000,000 for fiscal year 2003.
            (3) $58,000,000 for fiscal year 2004.
            (4) $60,000,000 for fiscal year 2005.
            (5) $60,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
    (d) High-End Computing Infrastructure and Applications.--Of the 
funds under subsection (a), the following sums are authorized to be 
appropriated to carry out high end computing infrastructure and 
associated applications in section 3(b)(4):
            (1) $156,000,000 for fiscal year 2002.
            (2) $183,000,000 for fiscal year 2003.
            (3) $197,000,000 for fiscal year 2004.
            (4) $200,000,000 for fiscal year 2005.
            (5) $200,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
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