[Congressional Bills 110th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 637 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







110th CONGRESS
  2d Session
S. RES. 637

 To honor the visionary and extraordinary work of Los Alamos National 
          Laboratory and IBM on the Roadrunner supercomputer.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             July 31, 2008

  Mr. Domenici (for himself and Mr. Bingaman) submitted the following 
 resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural 
                               Resources

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
 To honor the visionary and extraordinary work of Los Alamos National 
          Laboratory and IBM on the Roadrunner supercomputer.

Whereas on May 26, 2008, the Roadrunner supercomputer of the Los Alamos National 
        Laboratory broke a historic barrier by being powerful enough to run at a 
        petaflop, 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, making the 
        Roadrunner supercomputer the fastest computer in the world;
Whereas International Business Machines Corporation (referred to in this 
        resolution as ``IBM'') and Los Alamos National Laboratory overcame the 
        challenges of technological innovation to achieve a petaflop ahead of 
        schedule;
Whereas the Roadrunner supercomputer will enable the United States to tackle new 
        and more challenging problems;
Whereas the Roadrunner supercomputer will be primarily devoted to national 
        security in the United States and will be used for ensuring the safety 
        and reliability of the weapons stockpile of the United States and for 
        research in astrophysics, materials science, energy research, medicine, 
        and biotechnology;
Whereas Cell-based supercomputer technology of IBM is the most energy efficient 
        in the world;
Whereas the new high-performance computing capabilities enabled by hybrid 
        Opteron-Cell machines of IBM in the Roadrunner supercomputer of Los 
        Alamos National Laboratory enhance and improve United States 
        competitiveness;
Whereas from maintaining employment records for millions of people of the United 
        States, to providing technology to help the United States run the 
        Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, land on Mars, end the physical 
        testing of atomic weapons, and now help national security by ensuring 
        the safety of the nuclear weapons stockpile of the United States and 
        researching issues of critical importance such as human genome science 
        and climate change, the partnership of IBM with the Federal Government 
        and the dedication of that partnership to solving critical problems that 
        are seemingly impossible have remained unrivaled and relentless for more 
        than 80 years;
Whereas the Roadrunner supercomputer is the most recent achievement of long-
        standing science and technology leadership of Los Alamos National 
        Laboratory, from the Manhattan Project to the role of the Laboratory 
        today as a premier national security science laboratory; and
Whereas, the Roadrunner supercomputer funding was initiated with $35,000,000 in 
        the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2006 (Public Law 
        109-103): Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the Senate honors the visionary and extraordinary 
work of Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM for--
            (1) pushing the barriers of science and providing the 
        United States with historical high-performance computing 
        capabilities that will allow some of the most challenging 
        problems in science and engineering to be solved; and
            (2) achieving the capability to make petaflop calculations, 
        which--
                    (A) is considered a crucial milestone 
                internationally;
                    (B) is considered a sign of the competitiveness of 
                the United States in the critical new area of high-
                performance computing capability; and
                    (C) will allow the United States to solve even 
                bigger and more complex problems from the safety of the 
                nuclear deterrent of the United States to human genome 
                science and climate change.
                                 <all>