    [House Hearing, 113 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                    AMERICA'S NEXT GENERATION SUPERCOMPUTER:

                             THE EXASCALE CHALLENGE

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                             SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                            WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 113-31

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

           Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

                      U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
    81-195                    WASHINGTON : 2013
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
    Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC
    area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104  Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC
    20402-0001

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                       HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    RALPH M. HALL, Texas                 ZOE LOFGREN, California
    F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR.,         DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
        Wisconsin                        DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
    FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma             FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
    RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas              SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
    MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas             ERIC SWALWELL, California
    PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia               DAN MAFFEI, New York
    STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi       ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois             SCOTT PETERS, California
    LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana               DEREK KILMER, Washington
    STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas                AMI BERA, California
    BILL POSEY, Florida                  ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
    CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming              MARC VEASEY, Texas
    DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona            JULIA BROWNLEY, California
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              MARK TAKANO, California
    KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota           ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
    JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
    RANDY WEBER, Texas
    CHRIS STEWART, Utah
    VACANCY
                                     ------

                             Subcommittee on Energy

                      HON. CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming, Chair
    RALPH M. HALL, Texas                 ERIC SWALWELL, California
    FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma             ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
    RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas              JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
    MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas             MARC VEASEY, Texas
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois             MARK TAKANO, California
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              ZOE LOFGREN, California
    KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota           DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
    RANDY WEBER, Texas                   EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas

                                C O N T E N T S

                            Wednesday, May 22, 2013

                                                                       Page
    Witness List.....................................................     2

    Hearing Charter..................................................     3

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Cynthia Lummis, Chairwoman,
      Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................     9
        Written Statement............................................    10

    Statement by Representative Randy Hultgren, Committee on Science,
      Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...........    11
        Written Statement............................................    11

    Statement by Representative Eric Swalwell, Ranking Minority
      Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space,
      and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..................    12
        Written Statement............................................    13

                                   Witnesses:

    Dr. Roscoe Giles, Chairman, Advanced Scientific Computing
      Advisory Committee
        Oral Statement...............................................    16
        Written Statement............................................    18

    Dr. Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing,
      Environment and Life Sciences, Argonne National Laboratory
        Oral Statement...............................................    32
        Written Statement............................................    34

    Ms. Dona Crawford, Associate Director for Computation, Lawrence
      Livermore National Laboratory
        Oral Statement...............................................    46
        Written Statement............................................    48

    Dr. Daniel Reed, Vice President for Research and Economic
      Development, University of Iowa
        Oral Statement...............................................    60
        Written Statement............................................    62

    Discussion.......................................................    71

                 Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

    Dr. Roscoe Giles, Chairman, Advanced Scientific Computing
      Advisory Committee.............................................    84

    Dr. Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing,
      Environment and Life Sciences, Argonne National Laboratory.....    91

    Ms. Dona Crawford, Associate Director for Computation, Lawrence
      Livermore National Laboratory..................................    95

    Dr. Daniel Reed, Vice President for Research and Economic
      Development, University of Iowa................................   102

                    AMERICA'S NEXT GENERATION SUPERCOMPUTER:

                             THE EXASCALE CHALLENGE

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013

                      House of Representatives,
                                         Subcommittee on Energy
                   Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                       Washington, D.C.

        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
    Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Cynthia
    Lummis [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.001

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.002

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.003

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.004

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.005

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.006

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.007

        Chairwoman Lummis. Good morning. The Subcommittee will come
    to order. And we are delighted to have a terrific panel here
    this morning, so welcome to our hearing entitled ``America's
    Next Generation Supercomputer: the Exascale Challenge.'' In
    front of you are packets containing the written testimonies,
    biographies, and truth-in-testimony disclosures for today's
    witness panel.
        And now, I will recognize myself for five minutes for and
    opening statement followed by our Ranking Member Mr. Swalwell.
        The development and expanded availability of supercomputers
    has enabled society to push the frontiers of nearly every
    scientific discipline, and accelerate applications of that
    science in countless fields. It has enabled modeling and
    simulation necessary to address national security needs. It
    drives the boundaries of medical research, reduces cost to
    develop new products, and improves materials design processes,
    just to name a few.
        High performance computing has also revolutionized how the
    energy sector operates. Advanced modeling and simulation
    techniques, driven by computer algorithms and faster computing
    speeds, improve the efficiency of energy production and
    consumption technologies.
        These advancements ultimately trace back to Federal
    investments in basic research that provided the foundation for
    most of today's computing technologies. From the first megaflop
    supercomputers of the 1960s, the Federal investments have led
    to push across each landmark thousand-fold speed barrier to
    gigaflops, teraflops, and petaflops. I always think of floppy-
    eared rabbits and when I was a kid showing critters in 4H, I
    should have named them Giga, Tera, and Peta, but I just didn't
    know about it back then because that proceeded the first
    megaflop.
        Throughout this computing age, we have witnesses--we have
    witnessed yesterday's supercomputers become today's desktop
    computers and consumer devices often in incredibly short time
    frames. The spillover benefits to society are countless and
    immeasurable.
        The Department of Energy, led by the Advanced Scientific
    Computing Research program, plays a critical role in driving
    these computing technology breakthroughs. DOE supports world-
    class computational science facilities, such as the National
    Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Additionally, DOE
    funds cutting-edge applied mathematics research and next-
    generation networking activities.
        DOE's next major computing challenge, constructing an
    ``exascale'' computer system that is a thousand times faster
    than current world-leading supercomputers, may be the most
    daunting. Key scientific and technical obstacles associated
    with the architecture and energy efficiency of an exascale
    system must be overcome, and an immense amount of resources and
    effort will be required.
        As we head down this inevitable path to exascale computing,
    it is important we take time to plan and budget thoroughly to
    ensure a balanced approach that ensures broad buy-in from the
    scientific computing community. The Federal Government has
    limited resources and taxpayer funding must be spent on the
    most impactful projects. We need to ensure DOE efforts to
    develop an exascale system can be undertaken in concert with
    other foundational advanced scientific computing activities.
    This morning, we will hear testimony from expert witnesses
    regarding how best to achieve this balance.
        I would like to recognize if he is here, yes, he has come
    in, a leader in this effort, my colleague on the Energy
    Subcommittee, Representative Randy Hultgren.
        I would now like to yield the balance of my time to the
    gentleman from Illinois to summarize the discussion draft of
    his bill, ``American High-End Computing Leadership Act.''
        [The prepared statement of Mrs. Lummis follows:]

           Prepared Statement of Subcommittee Chairman Cynthia Lummis
        Good morning and welcome to today's Energy Subcommittee hearing to
    examine high performance computing research and development challenges
    and opportunities.
        The development and expanded availability of supercomputers has
    enabled society to push the frontiers of nearly every scientific
    discipline, and accelerate applications of that science in countless
    fields. It has enabled modeling and simulation necessary to address
    national security needs. It drives the boundaries of medical research,
    reduces cost to develop new products, and improves materials design
    processes, just to name a few areas.
        High performance computing has also revolutionized how the energy
    sector operates. Advanced modeling and simulation techniques, driven by
    complex algorithms and faster computing speeds, improve the efficiency
    of energy production and consumption technologies.
        These advancements ultimately trace back to Federal investments in
    basic research that provided the foundation for most of today's
    computing technologies. From the first megaflop supercomputers of the
    1960s, Federal investments have led the push across each landmark
    thousand-fold speed barrier-to gigaflops, teraflops, and petaflops.
    Throughout this computing age, we have witnessed as yesterday's
    supercomputers become today's desktop computers and consumer devices
    often in incredibly short time frames. The spillover benefits to
    society are countless and immeasurable.
        The Department of Energy, led by the Advanced Scientific Computing
    Research program, plays a unique and critical role in driving these
    computing technology breakthroughs. DOE supports world-class
    computational science facilities, such as the National Energy Research
    Scientific Computing Center. Additionally, DOE funds cutting edge
    applied mathematics research and next generation networking activities.
        DOE's next major computing challenge-constructing an ``exascale''
    computer system that is a thousand times faster than current world-
    leading supercomputers-may be the most daunting. Key scientific and
    technical obstacles associated with the architecture and energy
    efficiency of an exascale system must be overcome, and an immense
    amount of resources and effort will be required.
        As we head down this inevitable path to exascale computing, it is
    important we take time to plan and budget thoroughly to ensure a
    balanced approach that ensures broad buy-in from the scientific
    computing community. The Federal government has limited resources and
    taxpayer funding must be spent on the most impactful projects. We need
    to ensure DOE efforts to develop an exascale system can be undertaken
    in concert with other foundational advanced scientific computing
    activities. This morning, we will hear testimony from expert witnesses
    regarding how best to achieve this balance.
        I would like to recognize a leader of this effort, my colleague on
    the Energy Subcommittee, Representative Randy Hultgren. I would now
    like to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Illinois to
    summarize the discussion draft of his bill, ``American High-End
    Computing Leadership Act.''

        Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this
    hearing today. Exascale computing represents a brave new world
    of science for our Nation. The application of the next
    generation of supercomputers is vast. A thousand-fold increase
    in processing power will give us the intense computing tools
    necessary to ensure our national security by better testing our
    nuclear stockpile, revolutionized our understanding and
    treatment of complicated healthcare problems like neurological
    diseases or the genetics underpinning cancer with the ability
    to model new treatments and ensure our Nation's competitiveness
    in the big data economy of the 21st century by spilling over
    knowledge and expertise into industry and academia.
        And while I can postulate further on some of the applied
    uses of faster machines, I also know that simply by making
    these investments in basic science needed to overcome
    challenges in the immensely massive parallelism, power
    management, new architecture, and programming models, we will
    enrich our Nation intellectually and ensure our labor force
    remains competitive.
        I think at that point I will yield back, Madam Chair. Let
    me follow up if I have another minute. Do I?
        Chairwoman Lummis. Mr. Hultgren, you do.
        Mr. Hultgren. Madam Chair, let me summarize my bill
    quickly. Thank you.
        My bill would amend the existing statute by specifying the
    need to target the specific challenges and power requirements
    and parallelism required to make the leap to exascale. It also
    will instruct the Secretary of Energy to conduct a coordinated
    research program to develop exascale computing systems and
    require an integrated strategy and program management plan to
    ensure the health of existing research activities is not
    harmed.
        The bottom line is we do not know all of the ways we will
    use this next-generation of supercomputers, but given the vast
    and unpredictable ways that computing technology has already
    enhanced every part of our lives and given the investments
    being made in other countries to deploy large-scale systems, it
    is more important than ever that we make this investment today.
        I look forward to hearing the witnesses, what they think of
    this legislative proposal, areas we can improve it, challenges
    that we will face. And with that, I do thank you. I apologize
    for my confusion here but I yield back to the Chairwoman. Thank
    you very much, Madam Chair.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Hultgren follows:]

              Prepared Statement of Representative Randy Hultgren

        Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this hearing today.
        Exascale computing represents an exciting new world of science for
    our nation. The applications for the next generation of super computers
    are vast.
        A thousand fold increase in processing power will give us the
    intense computing tools necessary to ensure our national security by
    better testing our nuclear stockpile; revolutionize our understanding
    and treatment of complicated health care problems like neurological
    diseases or the genetics underpinning cancer with the ability to model
    new treatments; and ensure our nation's competitiveness in the big data
    economy of the 21st century by spilling over knowledge and expertise
    into industry and academia.
        And while I can postulate further on some of the applied uses of
    faster machines; I also know that simply by making these investments in
    the basic science needed to overcome challenges in immensely massive
    parallelism, power management, new architectures and programming
    models, we will enrich our nation intellectually and ensure our labor
    force remains competitive.
        Madam Chair, my bill would amend the existing statute by specifying
    the need to target the specific challenges in power requirements and
    parallelism required to make the leap to exascale. It would also
    instruct the Secretary of Energy to conduct a coordinated research
    program to develop exascale computing systems, and require an
    integrated strategy and program management plan to ensure the health of
    existing research activities is not harmed.
        The bottom line is, we do not know all of the ways we will use the
    next generation of supercomputers, but given the vast and unpredictable
    ways that computing technology has already enhanced every part of our
    lives, and given the investments being made in other countries to
    deploy large scale systems, it is more important than ever that we make
    this investment today.
        I look forward to hearing what the witnesses think of this
    legislative proposal, areas we can improve it, challenges we face, and
    with that I thank you and I yield back.

        Chairwoman Lummis. The gentleman yields back.
        And I might add on a personal note, today, my daughter is
    being awarded her master's degree in digital media from
    Columbia University. I unfortunately cannot be at her
    graduation because Congress is in session but I get to watch it
    on the computer, so I will get to see it. And I think to
    myself, first of all, what is a master's degree in digital
    media? Somebody my age doesn't even know what that is. And
    certainly, when I was her age, I could not have even begun to
    envision the career that would be open to her as of today, and
    the career that is open to her as of today is due in part to
    the investment that the people in this room and that the
    American people have made in computing, for science, and for
    the benefit of mankind. So this is a very important subject.
        The fact that it is such an important subject leads me to
    let you all know that there will be several comings and goings
    by Committee Members this morning. There are concurrent
    meetings going on around the buildings. In my case, we have the
    IRS in front of us down in Oversight and Government Reform and
    I know there are other Members that may have to come and go
    from time to time. We deeply appreciate your testimony here
    today. In my absence, our Vice Chair Mr. Weber will be in the
    chair, and of course, Mr. Swalwell, who is our Ranking Member,
    who I will recognize now, the gentleman from California, Mr.
    Swalwell.
        Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Chairman Lummis. And also
    congratulations to your daughter on this achievement. And thank
    you for holding this hearing today. And I want to thank the
    witnesses for being here. I also thank the witnesses who are
    not from the 15th Congressional District. We welcome you as
    well but especially welcome Ms. Crawford from Livermore,
    California.
        I am excited to learn more about the work that the DOE is
    doing in partnership with industry and our national
    laboratories, including both Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley
    national laboratories in particular and are carrying out to
    maintain the United States' leadership in the critical area of
    high-performance computing.
        As I am sure the witnesses will all describe in more
    detail, this capability enables our best and brightest minds to
    gain new insights into societal concerns ranging from
    Alzheimer's disease to climate change. Other examples of both
    industrial and academic research that benefit from our
    advanced, high-end computing capabilities include high-
    temperature superconductivity to significantly reduce energy
    losses in transmitting electricity; aerodynamic modeling for
    aircraft and vehicle design; pharmaceutical development; next-
    generation nuclear reactor design; fusion plasma modeling; and
    combustion simulation to guide the design of fuel-efficient
    clean engines such as work being carried out at the Sandia
    National Laboratory's combustion research facility.
        In short, many of the most pressing issues of our time,
    whether it is how we find our energy resources, how we make our
    energy resources more efficient, or how we solve the rising
    cost of healthcare can be solved through investments in high-
    performance computing.
        A focus of today's hearing is the development of an
    exascale computing capability. Now, my understanding is that
    exascale is often interchangeably used with extreme scale to
    refer to the next generation of supercomputers in general, but
    it also refers to a computing system that would be able to
    carry out a million trillion operations per second. Yes, a
    million trillion or a 1 with 18 zeros after it. That is about
    500 times faster than the world's fastest computer today. Such
    a system would be critical to meeting the Nation's needs in a
    number of important research areas like combustion science,
    climate science, modeling of the human brain, and ensuring the
    reliability of our nuclear weapons stockpile.
        That said, as we pursue the next generation of
    supercomputing capabilities, which I fully support, I want to
    ensure that the Nation is getting the most bang for buck out of
    our current world-leading facilities. It is noteworthy that
    while Lawrence Livermore, Argonne, and Oak Ridge national
    laboratories are three of the most powerful supercomputing
    centers in the world, and they are addressing incredibly
    important scientific issues that really require their advanced
    computing capabilities. Lawrence Berkeley's National Energy
    Research Scientific Computing Center actually serves thousands
    more users with only a fraction of those leadership machines'
    computing power.
        The point is not every computational research effort
    requires the fastest most sophisticated system we can possibly
    build and I think we also need to work more to make sure that
    what is sometimes called capacity supercomputing is more
    accessible to both the academic and industrial research
    communities that could benefit.
        I have always believed whether it was as a local city
    councilman or a sitting Member of Congress that the government
    works best when we can share our resources with the private
    sector. It doesn't serve anyone any good if we are just doing
    the research in the government and not transferring that
    research out to the private sector, and I think in high-
    performance computing we have already shown in our laboratories
    we are transferring it out. The transfer out makes us more
    efficient, can reduce healthcare costs, and also more
    importantly, especially in our area, it can create private-
    sector jobs on top of the thousands of jobs that already exist
    at our laboratories.
        So with that, I look forward to discussing these important
    issues with each of you today and I yield back the balance of
    my time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Swalwell follows:]

        Prepared Statement of Subcommittee Ranking Member Eric Swalwell
        Thank you Chairman Lummis for holding this hearing today, and I
    also want to thank the witnesses for being here--even the ones from
    outside of the 15th District of California!
        I am excited to learn more about the great work that the Department
    of Energy in partnership with industry and our national laboratories,
    including both Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National
    Laboratories in particular, are carrying out to maintain and advance
    U.S. leadership in the critical area of high performance computing.
        As I'm sure the witnesses will describe in more detail, this
    capability enables our best and brightest scientists to gain new
    insights into societal concerns ranging from Alzheimer's disease to
    climate change. Other examples of both industrial and academic research
    that benefit from our advanced high-end computing capabilities include:
    high temperature superconductivity to significantly reduce energy
    losses in transmitting electricity; aerodynamic modeling for aircraft
    and vehicle design; pharmaceutical development; next generation nuclear
    reactor design; fusion plasma modeling; and combustion simulation to
    guide the design of fuel-efficient clean engines, such as work being
    carried out at the Sandia National Laboratories' Combustion Research
    Facility.
        A focus of today's hearing is the development of an exascale
    computing capability. Now, my understanding is that ``exascale'' is
    often used interchangeably with ``extreme scale'' to refer to the next
    generation of supercomputers in general, but it also refers to a
    computing system that would be able to carry out a million trillion
    operations per second. (Yes, a million trillion, or a 1 with 18 zeros
    after it.) That's about 500 times faster than the world's fastest
    computers at today. Such a system would be critical to meeting that
    nation's needs in a number of important research areas like combustion
    science, climate science, modeling of the human brain, and ensuring the
    reliability of our nuclear weapons stockpile.
        That said, as we pursue the next generation of supercomputing
    capabilities-which I fully support-I also want to ensure that the
    nation is getting the most bang per buck out of our current world-
    leading facilities. It is noteworthy that while Lawrence Livermore,
    Argonne, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories are 3 of the most powerful
    supercomputers in the world, and they are addressing incredibly
    important scientific issues that really require their advanced
    computing capabilities, Lawrence Berkeley's National Energy Research
    Scientific Computing Center actually serves thousands of more users
    with only a fraction of those leadership machines' computing power. The
    point is, not every computational research effort requires the fastest,
    most sophisticated system we can possibly build, and I think we also
    need to do more to make what's sometimes called ``capacity''
    supercomputing more accessible to both the academic and industrial
    research communities that could benefit.
        With that, I look forward to discussing these important issues with
    each of you today, and I yield back the balance of my time.

        Chairwoman Lummis. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell.
        If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening
    statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
    point.
        Well, at this time I would like to introduce our witnesses,
    and the fun part today is we have two Members here who have
    witnesses from their districts. So I will start by introducing
    Dr. Roscoe Giles, Chairman of the Advanced Scientific Computing
    Advisory Committee of the Department of Energy and Professor at
    Boston University. Dr. Giles--and I have that right, don't I,
    Dr. Giles? Thank you. He has served in a number of leadership
    roles in the community including Member of the Board of
    Associated Universities, Inc., Chair of the Boston University
    Faculty Council, and General Chair of the SC Conference in
    2002. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University
    in 1975. That is a remarkable record of achievement, Dr. Giles.
    Thank you for being here.
        At this time, I would like to yield to the gentleman from
    Illinois, Mr. Hultgren, to introduce our second witness.
        Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Madam Chair.
        Our second witness is Dr. Rick Stevens, Associate
    Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment, and Life
    Sciences at Argonne National Laboratory. He heads Argonne's
    Computational Genomics Program and co-leads the DOE's
    laboratory planning effort for exascale computing research. He
    is also Professor of computer science at the University of
    Chicago and is involved in several interdisciplinary studies at
    the Argonne University of Chicago Computation Institute and at
    the Argonne University of Chicago Institute for Genomics and
    Systems Biology. He is doing amazing work at Argonne and at the
    University and the entire Illinois community is proud of his
    contributions to this cutting edge field of science. We are
    very glad to have you here, Dr. Stevens. Thank you.
        I yield back.
        Chairwoman Lummis. Thank you for your attendance today.
    That was my field although at a much lower level of academic
    achievement, Dr. Stevens. We are delighted you are here.
        Now, I would like to yield to the gentleman from
    California, Mr. Swalwell, to introduce our third witness.
        Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Chairman Lummis.
        And I have been very eager on this Committee to have a
    witness from Lawrence Livermore laboratory.
        Chairwoman Lummis. I can testify to that.
        Mr. Swalwell. I thank you for allowing this witness to be
    here today. Lawrence Livermore is the largest employer in my
    Congressional District and I have to really just commend the
    laboratory for their advocacy of the issues facing Lawrence
    Livermore. They are in constant contact with our office and
    this Committee so I am honored to today introduced Dona
    Crawford, who is the Associate Director of Computation at
    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
        Ms. Crawford is responsible for a staff of roughly 900 to
    develop and deploy an integrated computing environment for
    advanced simulations of complex physical phenomena like climate
    change, clean energy creation, biodefense, and
    nonproliferation. She has served on Advisory Committees for the
    National Academies and the National Science Foundation and
    currently serves as co-Chair of the Council on Competitiveness
    High-Performance Computing Advisory Committee, and is a member
    of IBM's Deep Computing Institute External Advisory Board. Ms.
    Crawford has a master's degree in operations research from
    Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from
    the University of Redlands, California.
        Ms. Crawford, thank you for being here today and I yield
    back the balance of my time.
        Chairwoman Lummis. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell. And my first
    exposure to Livermore, I used to walk around the lab. My first
    job out of college was working for a rodeo company in Northern
    California, and we were putting on the rodeo at Livermore.
        Mr. Swalwell. It is the fastest rodeo in the world. Did you
    know that?
        Chairwoman Lummis. You know, considering the rodeo company
    I worked for, I would believe that. Those rodeos ran like that
    and I used to go for walks around the lab just to get some
    exercise when I was there at Livermore putting on rodeos. So I
    know where you are, at least I knew where you are when I was a
    young college graduate in my first job.
        Our final witness is Dr. Daniel Reed, Vice President of
    Research and Economic Development at the University of Iowa.
    Previously, he served as a Senior Leader at Microsoft serving
    as Microsoft's Computing Strategist to Corporate Vice President
    for Extreme Computing, I love that, and Technology Policy. He
    received his Ph.D. in computer science in 1983 from Purdue
    University.
        As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited
    to five minutes each, after which the Members of the Committee
    will have five minutes each to ask questions. I now recognize
    Dr. Giles for five minutes to present his testimony with deep
    gratitude to all of you for your attendance today. Dr. Giles.

                TESTIMONY OF DR. ROSCOE GILES, CHAIRMAN,

            ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING ADVISORY COMMITTEE

        Dr. Giles. Yes, thank you, Chairman Lummis. And thanks to
    Members of the Committee for inviting me to testify today.
        I think the bill you are considering is very, very
    important for our field and for maintaining the Nation's
    leadership in computing and computational science. I am
    testifying today in my role as Chair of the Advisory Committee
    to ASCR and I will try to reflect that committee's views of
    some elements of the ASCR program and hope to demonstrate that
    we are ready to move forward and sort of eager to move forward
    in this direction. And it is important that we do so.
        The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research has
    programs and investments that include computer and networking
    facilities that support DOE's science programs; leadership
    computing facilities for which the exascale discussion is very
    directly relevant with unique high-end capabilities made
    available to DOE and to all the Nation, including industry;
    applied mathematics research whose results provide the
    framework for future applications and systems; computer science
    system and software research, whose results both enable
    applications of current systems and chart the direction for
    future systems.
        And beyond this, ASCR investments--ASCR is the abbreviation
    for Advanced Scientific Computer Research--we get lost in
    acronyms sometimes. ASCR investments have also built human
    expertise in the scientific and technical staff at the labs and
    through attention to integrating the next generation of
    computational science leaders into DOE programs and facilities
    through programs like the Computational Science Graduate
    Fellows Program, which I also am involved with.
        It is hard in these few minutes to state the breadth and
    depth of science productivity that is being enabled by these
    machines. We now see the initial results of the petascale era.
    As one measure, we might mention that more than 2,000 peer-
    reviewed research articles based directly on projects supported
    by ASCR computing facilities were published in 2012 alone. One
    I love is a trillion-particle simulation in cosmology, since I
    started out in the '80s struggling to do a million-particle
    simulation of molecular dynamics, and to go another factor of a
    million is astonishing.
        In 2009 our advisory committee was charged with reviewing
    ASCR's body of work on exascale computing. We delivered the
    Rosner report, ``The Opportunities and Challenges of Exascale
    Computing,'' in fall of 2010. We found the case for exascale
    computing compelling and recommended the DOE should proceed
    expeditiously with an exascale initiative so that it continues
    to lead in using extreme scale computing to meet important
    national needs.
        As you have heard mentioned this morning, when we wrote
    that, we were talking about growing a factor of 1,000 forward
    in the future. Now, that is a factor of 500. I am glad to see
    that we are starting to in this bill to really move forward on
    this. And we have had a sense in the committee that we have
    been waiting for that forward motion from the system.
        Some of the--during this time, ASCR has been busy doing
    foundational research to make this possible, so there--and we
    will hear more about it, I am sure, from other speakers. But
    the establishment of co-design centers, computing research, and
    applied mathematics research and some prototype projects with
    fast forward and design forward that are bringing us in this
    direction, and I think we are making progress but not the
    progress we should be making at the scale we should be making
    it, and hopefully, the bill will help deal with that issue.
        Our committee has been asked to review ASCR facility plans
    for the relatively short-term future of the next ten years, not
    including exascale deployment, and we found those facility
    plans to be very sound and compelling that involve enhancements
    to the petascale systems. We have also recently examined the
    intersection of big data needs within the Department of Energy
    and ASCR's exascale program and found them quite convergent.
    The exascale technologies we are talking about developing will
    be essential in systems that analyze big data problems of the
    nature that come to the Department of Energy from both
    experiment and theory, and we have a--quite a long and detailed
    report about that.
        I wanted to just summarize by saying I am very, very glad
    to see the legislation that we have here. I am very supportive
    of the direction we are going. I would only ask that the
    funding level be sure to be sufficient for the scope of our
    dreams. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Giles follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.008

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.009

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.010

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.011

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.012

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.013

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.014

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.015

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.016

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.017

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.018

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.019

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.020

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.021

        Mr. Weber. [Presiding] Thank you, Dr. Giles.
        Now, I recognize Dr. Stevens to present his testimony. Turn
    your mike on.

                     TESTIMONY OF DR. RICK STEVENS,

              ASSOCIATE LABORATORY DIRECTOR FOR COMPUTING,

                     ENVIRONMENT AND LIFE SCIENCES,

                      ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY

        Dr. Stevens. Oh, thanks. Thank you. Madam Chair, Ranking
    Member Swalwell, Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate this
    opportunity to talk to you about the future of high-performance
    computing research and development and about the importance of
    U.S. leadership in the development and deployment of exascale
    computing.
        In my own work at Argonne and the University of Chicago I
    split my time between trying to advance high-performance
    computing architectures and systems and doing research on how
    to do computational genomics in the pursuit of problems in
    energy, the environment, and infectious disease. And those
    projects have given me insight not only on the underlying
    technology but on the impact of applications.
        I believe that advancing American leadership in high-
    performance computing is vital to our national interest. High-
    performance computing is a critical technology for the Nation,
    and it is also the underlying foundation for advancing progress
    in modeling and simulation and big data. It serves both of
    these needs. It is also needed by all branches of science and
    engineering for forward progress. It is used more and more by
    U.S. industry to maintain a competitive edge in the development
    of new products and services, and it is emerging as a critical
    policy tool for government leaders who can rely on simulations
    to add insight to policy or technical decisions.
        Today, the United States is the undisputed leader in the
    development and use of high-performance computing technologies.
    However, other nations are increasingly aware of the strategic
    importance of HPC and are creating supercomputing research
    programs that challenge our leadership.
        Japan has significant programs for over a decade in this
    area. They have fielded large-scale machines that are
    comparable to the machines in the United States. But China is
    emerging as a serious player as well and Europe has been
    investing in revitalization of their own high-performance
    computing sector. So we now have at least three sectors on the
    planet besides the United States making serious progress.
        All have set their sights on the development of machines
    that are 1,000 times faster than those most powerful machines
    today. Everyone is looking at exascale. And achieving this goal
    is important. The drive to exascale will have a sustained
    impact on American competitiveness. It gives companies and
    researchers the means and the impetus for developing new
    processes, new services, and new products.
        For example, we need increased compute power to enable
    first principle simulations of materials for energy storage
    that would give us access to a potential 500-mile battery pack
    for electric cars. We want to build end-to-end simulations of
    advanced nuclear reactors that are modular, safe, and
    affordable. We want to revolutionize small business
    manufacturing and digital fabrication and put in place a
    digital supply chain that would potentially revolutionize the
    economy in the United States.
        We want to model controls for power grids that have
    significant amount of renewable energy, and we want to increase
    the resolution of climate models to provide more details on
    regional impacts. And finally, we want to create a personalized
    medicine that can incorporate an individual's genomic
    information into a specific customized plan for prevention or
    treatment of disease.
        All of these challenges require machines that are thousands
    of times faster than the current machines. The development of
    practical exascale system, however, will also mean affordable
    petascale systems and broad deployment, broad accessibility.
        The DOE Office of Science supercomputer centers at Argonne,
    Berkeley, and Oak Ridge are currently oversubscribed by at
    least a factor of three. This means that not all of the science
    that we could be doing on these machines is getting done. With
    current funding levels, these systems can only be upgraded
    about once every four to five years. And at current research--
    at current levels of research investment, the U.S. vendors are
    not likely to reach an exascale performance level that we can
    afford to deploy until considerably after 2020. This is a
    problem for us if we want to maintain our leadership.
        Both China and Japan are working on plans to reach the
    level by 2020 or before. Japan is building a $1.1 billion
    investment program aiming to deploy exascale machines by 2020,
    and China has announced a goal to reach exascale before 2020.
    China is aggressively spending on infrastructure for
    supercomputing and succeeding in deploying large-scale systems
    rivaling the largest systems deployed in the United States. It
    is widely expected they will regain lead on this capability
    this year, although their designs are mostly based on
    incorporating U.S. components. In the future, they plan to
    deploy systems based on Chinese components.
        I have been working since 2007 building a plan with my
    colleagues at the laboratories, academia, and DOE, and we
    identified five hurdles that we must cross in order to reach
    exascale. We have to reduce systems powered by a factor of 50;
    we must improve memory performance and cost by a factor of 100;
    we must improve our ability to program these systems; we must
    increase the parallelism in our applications; and we must
    improve reliability. These are not simple tasks but these are
    very important if we are to reach this goal. And I believe we
    have a duty to move as swiftly as we can on this objective.
        Thank you. I would be more than happy to answer your
    questions. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Stevens follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.022

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.023

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.024

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.025

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.026

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.027

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.028

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.029

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.030

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.031

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.032

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.033

        Mr. Weber. Thank you, Dr. Stevens.
        I recognize Ms. Crawford for her testimony.

                    TESTIMONY OF MS. DONA CRAWFORD,

                  ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR COMPUTATION,

                 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

        Ms. Crawford. I thank you. I thank Chair Lummis and I thank
    you, Mr. Vice Chairman Weber and Ranking Member Swalwell, for
    inviting me to be here today. I ask that my full statement as
    submitted to the Committee made part of the hearing record, and
    if I may, I will summarize.
        Mr. Weber. Without objection, so ordered.
        Ms. Crawford. I am Dona Crawford, Associate Director of
    Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I will
    shorten that by saying LLNL or Livermore. Livermore is a
    national security laboratory of the National Nuclear Security
    Administration of the Department of Energy and home to Sequoia,
    one of the fastest computers in the world.
        Livermore has the responsibility for maintaining the
    safety, security, and effectiveness of the Nation's strategic
    nuclear deterrent through the Stockpile Stewardship Program.
    High-performance computing has been a core competency of the
    lab to meet this mission need since over 60 years. In fact, the
    NNSA labs, working in close partnership with U.S. HPC industry,
    were at the forefront of the last revolutionary design shift in
    HPC computer architectures and applications development. That
    is the foundation of today's HPC systems.
        Over the past 20 years, the NNSA labs learned many valuable
    lessons, including how to best structure R&D efforts to develop
    computing architectures that meet our demanding mission
    requirements while cost-effectively leveraging market-driven
    technology within industry. These lessons are very valuable in
    our efforts to develop exascale computing.
        I applaud the Committee for its determined efforts to
    sustain U.S. leadership in this vitally important and
    increasingly competitive arena of high-performance computing.
    It is imperative that the United States embark on an R&D
    program to develop new technologies and computer architectures
    to support exascale computing.
        My main point of emphasis today is straightforward. This
    pursuit must be a joint Office of Science/NNSA effort working
    in tandem through partnership with U.S. HPC industry to ensure
    system architectures that meet Office of Science and NNSA
    mission requirements. Working together, the Office of Science
    and NNSA have combined scarce resources and have already
    initiated a number of R&D efforts and contracts with industrial
    partners but lack the resources to invest at the magnitude
    necessary to assure success over the next decade.
        Due to the technically challenging nature of developing
    exascale supporting technologies in computing capability, it is
    vitally important to ensure there are competitive teams each
    with Office of Science and NNSA laboratories partnered with
    U.S. HPC industry collaborators. Equally important is the
    development of an integrated strategy and program management
    plan.
        Current U.S. leadership in HPC is a direct result of the
    Nation's investment in computational capability to support the
    Stockpile Stewardship Program. U.S. HPC investment has provided
    significant computing capability to maintain the U.S. nuclear
    deterrent and this computing capability enables us to simulate
    in 2-D at high resolution and high physics fidelity or simulate
    in 3-D at low resolution. Today, we cannot simulate in 3-D at
    high resolution and high physics fidelity which will be
    required for the stockpile mission needs. Therefore, a new
    architecture enabling exascale computing is required for the
    NNSA mission.
        This will not be easy. Development of exascale-class
    systems cannot be achieved through a straightforward refinement
    of today's technologies. Surmounting multiple technical issues
    will require sustained research and development effort. But
    there is no doubt exascale computing will yield valuable
    benefits to near-term mission requirements, as well as to U.S.
    economic competitiveness.
        Over the last two decades, supercomputers have transformed
    the way the world conducts scientific research and has enabled
    discovery and development across a broad set of disciplines. In
    a 2008 U.S. Council on Competitiveness report, the Council
    states, ``supercomputing is part of the corporate arsenal to
    beat rivals by staying one step ahead of the innovation curve.
    It allows companies to design products and analyze data in ways
    once unimaginable.''
        In one example, Livermore is leveraging its HPC
    capabilities in the California Energy Systems for the 21st
    Century Initiative. The California Public Utilities Commission
    and state investor-owned utilities are collaborating with
    Livermore to improve and expand energy systems to meet our
    future energy needs. The owners, operators, regulators, and a
    joint team of technical experts will use the Nation's most
    advanced modeling simulation and analytical tools to gain
    unprecedented insight and generate new data to reduce risk and
    inform solutions to issues facing 21st-century energy systems
    such as renewable energy integration and use of smart grid
    technology.
        There are many other examples that highlight the importance
    of supercomputing and reinforce the value of maintaining U.S.
    HPC leadership. For now, let me close again by saying thank you
    and I look forward to working with the Committee to ensure
    continued U.S. HPC leadership.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Crawford follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.034

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.035

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.036

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.037

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.038

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.039

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.040

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.041

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.042

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.043

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.044

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.045

        Mr. Weber. Thank you, Ms. Crawford.
        Dr. Reed, I recognize you for your testimony.

                     TESTIMONY OF DR. DANIEL REED,

         VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT,
                           UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

        Dr. Reed. Thank you. Chair Lummis, Vice Chair Weber,
    Ranking Member Swalwell, Members of the Subcommittee, my name
    is Dan Reed and I am the Vice President for Research and
    Economic Development at the University of Iowa. Thank you for
    the opportunity to share my perspectives on exascale computing
    and to respond to your questions regarding the American High-
    End Computing Leadership Act.
        Today, I would like to make four points regarding the
    exascale and high-performance computing program followed by a
    set of specific recommendations for the future. They are drawn
    from my nearly 30 years of experience in high-performance
    computing as a researcher, as an academic and corporate leader,
    as a Director of the National Science Foundation Supercomputing
    Center, and as a participant in national science and technology
    policy.
        First of all, as others have noted, high-performance
    computing is unique among scientific instruments. It is
    distinguished by its universality as an intellectual amplifier.
    New, more powerful supercomputers and computational models
    yield insights across all scientific and engineering
    disciplines. Advanced computing is also essential for analyzing
    the torrent of experimental data produced by scientific
    instruments and sensors, but it is about more than science.
    With advanced computing, real-time data fusion, and powerful
    numerical models, we have the potential to predict the tracks
    of devastating tornadoes such as the recent one in Oklahoma,
    saving lives, and ensuring the future of our children.
        My second point is that we face an uncertain future of
    computing and in particular high-performance computing
    leadership in this country. As others have noted, today, HPC
    systems from Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, and Argonne
    National Laboratories occupy the first, second, and fourth
    place on the list of the world's fastest computers. From this,
    one might surmise that all is well, yet U.S. leadership in both
    deployed HPC capability and in the technologies needed to
    create future systems is under challenge.
        Also, as others have noted, other nations are investing
    strategically in high-performance computing to advance national
    priorities. And the U.S. research community has repeatedly
    warned of the potential and actuality of eroding U.S.
    leadership in computing and in high-performance computing and
    emphasized the need for sustained and strategic investment. I
    have had the privilege of chairing many of those studies
    personally as a member PITAC, of PCAST, of National Academies'
    boards, and yet many of these warnings have been largely
    unheeded.
        This brings me to my third point: the deep interdependence
    a basic research of vibrant U.S. computing industry and high-
    performance computing capability. It has long been axiomatic
    that the United States is the world leader in information
    technology. Our global leadership is not a birthright. As Andy
    Grove, the former CEO of Intel, noted in his famous aphorism
    ``only the paranoid survive.'' U.S. leadership has been
    repeatedly earned and hard-fought based on continued Federal
    Government commitment to basic research, translation of that
    research into technological innovations, and the creation of
    new products by vibrant U.S. industry.
        This brings me to my fourth point. Computing is in deep
    transition to a new era with profound implications for the
    future of U.S. industry and HPC. My colleague Mr. Stevens
    touched on many of the issues around energy management and low-
    power devices and they are key to this topic. U.S. consumers
    and businesses are an increasingly small minority of the global
    market for mobile devices and for cloud services.
        We live in a post-PC world, as we all know, where U.S.
    companies compete in a global device ecosystem. Unless we are
    vigilant, these economic and technical changes could further
    shift the center of enabling technology R&D away from the
    United States with profound implications for our future HPC
    capability. Given this, what are my recommendations for the
    future? First and most importantly, we need to change our model
    for HPC research and deployment if the United States is to
    maintain its leadership. This must include deep and sustained
    interagency collaborations defined by a regularly updated
    strategic R&D plan and associated, verifiable metrics,
    commensurate budget allocations, and accountability to realize
    the plan's goals.
        DOE's partners--it needs the National Science Foundation,
    the Department of Defense, NIST and NIH, and other agencies to
    fulfill their important and complementary roles to DOE as
    engaged partners and supporters of basic research in technology
    development. We also need long-term industry engagement.
        Second, advanced HPC deployments are crucial, but the
    computing R&D journey is as important as any single system
    deployment. A vibrant U.S. ecosystem of talented and trained
    people and technical innovation is the true lifeblood of
    sustainable exascale computing.
        Finally, we must balance and embrace dual-use technology
    R&D supporting both high-performance computing and ensuring
    U.S. industry competitiveness. Neither HPC nor big data R&D can
    be sacrificed to advance the other, nor can hardware R&D
    dominate investments in algorithms, software, applications, and
    people. All are crucial.
        Finally, let me again commend this Committee for its
    continued commitment to high-performance computing. It has been
    my privilege to testify here many times. I appreciate the
    support of the Committee. And like my colleagues, I would be
    delighted to answer questions at the appropriate time.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Reed follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.046

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.047

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.048

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.049

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.050

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.051

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.052

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.053

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.054

        Mr. Weber. Thank you, Dr. Reed. And thank you all for your
    testimony. Man, lots of questions come to mind. And, you know,
    I guess I am an old-timer. I grew up back in the '60s and we
    didn't have computers, actually, we did. There was a flat
    table, you put a quarter in, and you chased a little Pac-Man
    around. Those were our computers.
        So I have a question here, and I think you kind of alluded
    to it, Dr. Reed, but I will ask this maybe starting with Dr.
    Giles. Is it Giles?
        Dr. Giles. Giles actually.
        Mr. Weber. Giles, there you go. Thank you.
        In December 2011 Congress directed DOE to provide a
    strategic roadmap relating to the development of an exascale
    computing system. However, it is my understanding that after 15
    months of the mandated completion date, the report is not yet
    finalized. Are you aware of this report?
        Dr. Giles. I am aware of it but my position is as an
    external representative of the community relative to ASCR so I
    am actually not an insider and I have not seen the report.
        Mr. Weber. Okay.
        Dr. Giles. My understanding is exactly what you said.
        Mr. Weber. Okay.
        Dr. Giles. But I don't have anything unfortunately to add
    to that.
        Mr. Weber. Nothing that you want to admit here publicly?
        Dr. Giles. No, actually nothing that I know. Anything I
    know, I will tell you.
        Mr. Weber. Of course, our goal is to get it. Dr. Stevens,
    how about you?
        Dr. Stevens. Well, I am aware of the report. I think it is
    a fine plan. I think that the internal process of getting that
    report out is what has blocked it, and I hope it reaches you
    quickly.
        Mr. Weber. Okay. Any help you can give us in that endeavor?
        Dr. Stevens. I don't have any specific recommendation
    except to just reemphasize that this is a critical plan that
    must be delivered and must be understood and articulated and
    executed.
        Mr. Weber. Okay. Thank you. And Ms. Crawford, I don't mean
    to put you on the hot seat, but you are on the hot seat.
        Ms. Crawford. I have nothing to add to what Dr. Stevens
    said. We are--we work at the laboratories and we are not part
    of the formal process between the DOE and the OMB to get that
    report out. I do support what is written in the report. The
    labs had a lot of input. I have not seen the final report.
        Mr. Weber. And Dr. Reed, since you came to us with four
    points followed by recommendations, and I love that by the way.
    One of the things you said in your recommendation was the
    Department of Energy needs partners and long-term industry
    engagement. How do we expedite this? How do we make this
    happen?
        Dr. Reed. Well, I think there are several points relevant.
    One is to recognize that, as I said, it is a false dichotomy to
    pit investment and some of these big data issues against high-
    performance computing, and I think frankly that is the root of
    some of the issues that we have to resolve in terms of moving
    forward.
        In terms of the agencies, I believe, as I pointed out in my
    written testimony, that they each fulfill and historically have
    fulfilled important and complementary roles. The Department of
    Energy has been crucial in terms of advanced prototyping and
    deploying of the largest scale systems. The other agencies,
    though, provide support for enabling technology research. The
    National Science Foundation is one of the key enablers of that
    long-term research.
        What is important is that all those players be at the table
    and be engaged in supporting this integrated agenda. I think
    from the industry's perspective to sort of answer your specific
    question, that is where industry--and I speak now again from my
    industry experience--it is important that the government be a
    committed and not fickle partner because the cost of money and
    the time planning for companies to execute is really crucial.
    And as I was saying, that combination is key to the future of
    the U.S. industry not just for high-performance computing but
    for how much information technology means to the U.S. economy.
        Mr. Weber. All right. Thank you. And Ms. Crawford, let me
    come back to you. I think you said that this exascale computing
    either can't or won't be achieved through refinement. What did
    you mean by that?
        Ms. Crawford. What I mean by that is the current system
    architectures today can't simply be scaled up to produce a
    usable and cost-effective system. In principle, one could scale
    it up and you would have a system that would fill the room and
    would take 100 megawatts of power, so that is not a cost-
    effective system. So the technologies have to change and we
    have to change in memory, in processors, in storage and
    networking and the programming models. And so that is what I
    mean by we can't simply scale-up the programs of today.
        Mr. Weber. Let me send that over to Dr. Stevens. And you
    mentioned about more or less power, I guess explain, you said
    less power.
        Dr. Stevens. Right. We need to develop processors and
    memory and network components that consume considerably less
    power than current systems in order to scale-up. Right now, if
    we took a current kind of 10 petaflop system and scaled it up
    to an exascale, it would consume nearly a gigawatt of power,
    which is not feasible from a physical infrastructure standpoint
    or a----
        Mr. Weber. Right.
        Dr. Stevens. --cost standpoint. So we need much more power-
    efficient devices. We also need better programming models
    because we are going to have to have a lot more parallelism
    inside these machines, 1 million--or 1,000 times more
    parallelism than we have now and we need ways of accessing that
    parallelism easily for programmers. So we have a lot of work to
    do. We know what to do. The DOE's plan includes all of these
    activities so it is--I think the United States has a good
    position to do this; we just need the resources and the long-
    term commitment.
        Mr. Weber. All right. Thank you. And I just want to make an
    observation before I yield to the Ranking Member and that is
    that I am glad to hear you say that national security is
    involved in this and tied up in this. That is very crucially
    important. And I think it will carry a lot of weight with
    Congress. Hopefully, it will. So I thank you for your
    testimony. And with that, I yield to Mr. Swalwell.
        Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And my questions will
    principally be for Ms. Crawford.
        First, does research in high-performance computing require
    the United States Government to make investments? And what I
    mean is why can't we simply rely on the private sector to
    innovate and invent the next supercomputing architecture and
    software and then the government can just buy off-the-shelf
    technology?
        Ms. Crawford. The short answer is, yes, the U.S. Government
    does need to invest in order to shape the exascale
    architectures for our mission needs. I can use an old example.
    When we started the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative
    in the mid-1990s for the Stockpile Stewardship Program,
    industry and the consumer base was driving computing in a
    direction that would not meet our needs. And without our
    investment and our sustained investment and focused on
    cooperation and developing those processors that would meet our
    needs, we wouldn't have had the computers and the computing
    capability that we have today. And so today, it is essential
    that we work together with the Office of Science laboratories
    and the NNSA laboratories to meet this mission needs.
        A shorter answer perhaps is that we are going to follow
    industry technologies. We can't afford our own, you know,
    brand-new fab or our brand-new machines. What we want to do is
    pay on the margins to make those machines viable for our
    particular applications, which is mimicking the, you know,
    physical phenomena around us.
        Mr. Swalwell. And when we look at our global competitors--
    Japan, China, India, Brazil, Russia--are they allowing or
    relying solely upon the private market or are they also having
    government investment at the table as well?
        Ms. Crawford. There is strong government investment in
    Japan, China, Russia, the European Union. It is about $1.1
    billion of investment in Japan. I would have to do the
    translation but the Ministry of Science and Technology five-
    year plan within China is investing and again not just in the
    hardware technologies but they are investing in the low-level
    software and the applications and making sure that they have
    the ecosystem in order to be able to deploy these systems
    effectively to make a difference to their underlying national
    security and economic competitiveness. So----
        Mr. Swalwell. So it sounds like----
        Ms. Crawford. --they are going to be large investments.
        Mr. Swalwell. It sounds like for the United States to keep
    its edge in high-performance computing, we will need to
    continue to have the Federal Government make investments in
    these programs, is that right?
        Ms. Crawford. Absolutely.
        Mr. Swalwell. You talked a little bit about the joint
    partnership that must take place between NNSA and the Office of
    Science. Why is exascale capability so critical to DOE's
    National Nuclear Security Administration?
        Ms. Crawford. So then I will take a more focused view on
    just what is going on within the NNSA laboratories. It is our
    duty to assess the state of the stockpile on an annual basis,
    and the stockpile is being decreased in the numbers of weapons
    and the types of weapons. That makes each single weapon
    remaining in the stockpile critically important to understand
    what is going on----
        Mr. Swalwell. Going toward a more leaner and meaner model,
    right?
        Ms. Crawford. Leaner and meaner, and so those systems, as
    they age, they are being modernized as parts begin to fail, and
    so there are a number of things that we need to understand, you
    know, physically. You know, nuclear weapons are very complex.
    Think about parking your car in the garage and not turning it
    on but then wanting to be able to use it when you have to. You
    know, there are special materials that are changing over time
    and all kinds of things that go on just sitting there.
        We need high fidelity 3-D simulations to understand, you
    know, the initial conditions, the engineering features, safety
    features, the security features, and today, we cannot simulate
    at that high fidelity. So we have a number of--what we do is
    look at the kinds of calculations we are going to do and the
    kinds of computing that is required to do those calculations
    and so--for stockpile assessment, for the life extension
    programs for materials aging, for safety and surety, we have a
    range of exascale needs for the kinds of calculations that will
    have to go on in high fidelity, high-resolution 3-D, and they
    range from half-an-exascale to 1,000 exascales over the period
    of the next 10 years.
        Mr. Swalwell. And Ms. Crawford----
        Ms. Crawford. Starting in about 2018.
        Mr. Swalwell. Can you tell me more about Livermore's work
    to address industrial and medical research needs, for example,
    your groundbreaking simulation of the human heart and your
    recent work with the California Energy Commission to improve
    energy management throughout the State and how exascale and HPC
    have affected our ability to do this?
        Ms. Crawford. I would be glad to. Having developed these
    capabilities for our mission drivers, then they are applicable,
    as Dr. Reed has said, to many other activities. Last year, we
    worked with IBM to develop a code called cardioid and it does--
    it models the electrical signals of the heart and it has the
    potential to be used to test drugs or medical devices, the code
    ran in nearly real-time across our 20 petaflop machine at
    Livermore beating an astonishing 60 beats per minute, so this
    is almost, you know, 12 percent of real-time. This calculation
    ran at 59 percent of peak of this machine, and that is--you
    know, it is very incredible and amazing thing to take a new
    code and put it on a new machine and run at this scale. It runs
    in a time to solution over 1,200 times faster than the previous
    state-of-the-art and this work shows promise for what advanced
    computing can do for understanding the human body. But it also
    demonstrated the extreme level of specificity and technical
    acuity required to achieve this result. And of course, these
    insights that we gain there will then be applied back to the
    stockpile.
        Mr. Swalwell. Great. Well, thank you so much, Ms. Crawford.
    And thank you again to our other witnesses. Thank you, Mr.
    Chair.
        Mr. Hultgren. [Presiding] Thank you. And I will recognize
    myself for five minutes for a few questions.
        Part of our challenge as a Subcommittee is certainly to
    understand the right thing to do but also to present it to the
    larger Committee and even beyond that to Members of Congress,
    so a couple of questions. Just if you have been messaging or
    how to present how important this is and why this is so
    important so I would address this first question to Dr. Stevens
    and Ms. Crawford. Wonder if you could just discuss the expected
    breadth of applications for the exascale computing. Is this
    something that could be used for a wide range of important
    disciplines from material to chemistry to medicine to nuclear
    science similar to the current supercomputers or is the
    expected range of disciplines more narrow such as climate
    science modeling or for weapons development?
        Dr. Stevens. So the range of applications for exascale are
    no less broad than the current machines. In fact, there are
    many problems that haven't been tried in the past, particularly
    in biomedical science where we were just afraid to try them. We
    didn't have enough compute power. This idea of trying to build,
    say, detailed models in the human body, not just the heart but
    now include the lungs, include the nervous system, include the
    gastrointestinal system and build a virtual human, that is a
    problem that will require 1,000 times current machines. It is
    not really feasible so people haven't tried it. So my sense is
    that we will find more and more applications as we build more
    capable systems.
        We are also going to increase the ability for these systems
    to deal with data, and so a new class of applications that is
    emerging in both national security and in engineering research
    is this idea of doing modeling simulation with uncertainty
    quantification, this idea that not only will you get a result,
    you will get some confidence measure on that result. And that
    is something that requires hundreds of times more compute power
    than the current capability which means you can only do one
    simulation.
        Ms. Crawford. I second everything that Dr. Stevens said.
    And it is limitless. Computing is so foundational. Anything
    that--any physical process that you can represent
    mathematically, which are most of them, you can then model in
    the computer with great fidelity. And the greater the fidelity
    we have, the better we can understand the world around us. And
    so I can just go on and on and on but, you know, we work at our
    laboratory in a number of areas with industry, with other
    national laboratories, with academia to make sure that we are
    applying these to the breadth of possibilities.
        Mr. Hultgren. Well, Ms. Crawford, if I can get into just a
    little bit more specific and really following up on the Ranking
    Member's discussion and also on the Vice Chairman's of what
    does speak to Members of Congress and inspire us to make a
    commitment, especially a financial commitment at a time like
    this, and certainly, one of those is national security.
        So I wondered if you could just talk briefly. Is exascale
    computing considered critical to advancing national security,
    and if so, has the National Nuclear Security Administration
    gone on record to say that? If so, how is the NNSA prepared to
    financially contribute to this effort and what would be an
    appropriate percentage contribution to an exascale computer
    from NNSA, would you say?
        Ms. Crawford. There is a lot of questions there so----
        Mr. Hultgren. Yes.
        Ms. Crawford. --let's see if I can remember them.
        Mr. Hultgren. The first thing is have they gone on record
    of saying that this is a key component? And then basically then
    what kind of commitment should we expect from them?
        Ms. Crawford. Computing is the integrating element of
    maintaining the safety, security, and reliability of the
    nuclear weapons stockpile without returning to underground
    tests. So by integrating element, what I mean is we have the
    old test data, we have aboveground small experiments that we
    are doing, and we have a lot of theory and we have our new
    models. And we are bringing this all together in the computer.
    So this is an integrating element and this is the only way that
    we know to understand what is going on in the nuclear weapon.
    And so for that reason, we believe that it is extremely
    important.
        The NNSA is making an investment in the Advanced Scientific
    Computing Program. To maintain leadership, you need to have a
    base program. You need to have, you know, sort of a near-term
    program and you need to have a far-reaching program. Currently,
    the Office of Science and the NNSA both have a very strong base
    program. We have heard about the wonderful facilities at the
    laboratories, and of course it is not just the computer
    hardware itself but it is the applications that help us
    understand the world around us.
        We are investing with the Office of Science in some near-
    term research with industrial partners to look at some of those
    long lead time technology changes that need to be made. We need
    to make additional investments that are not in our current
    budgets in the programming environments for the exascale
    computing and in the math libraries so that we can actually use
    this billion-way parallelism.
        Mr. Hultgren. Okay. I see my time is expired. At this
    point, I hope that we will have an opportunity to have a second
    round of questioning as well.
        Mr. Swalwell. I don't have any objection.
        Mr. Hultgren. We can talk about that. Well, let's go ahead
    and we will recognize Mr. Veasey from Texas. Okay. Then Mr.
    Lipinski from Illinois is recognized for five minutes.
        Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I wanted to ask everyone on the panel a question about
    international partnerships. You know, obviously this cuts both
    ways. You can reduce the cost of reaching exascale capabilities
    with international partnerships but then there is the issue of,
    you know, damaging our Nation's economic competitiveness,
    potentially our national security, because we are not doing
    this on our own. Now, where do you come down on this? Is it
    worthwhile and how far should we go in international
    partnerships and at what point is it still an advantage? At
    what point does it become a disadvantage for us economically,
    giving up our lead on high-end computing? So whoever wants to
    start with that one. Dr. Stevens?
        Dr. Stevens. I will start. So I think the primary
    opportunity in international collaboration is in software, and
    in particular, the components of software that are open source
    that right now most of the software that runs on these machines
    other than the applications is built on--based on open source
    technologies developed largely in the United States. That is a
    significant lift to move all of that software to next-
    generation platforms, and international collaboration can help
    there provided that the software is--stays in the open.
        I think where we don't want to go at least in the near term
    is in deep hardware partnerships internationally. I think that
    is a place where we want to maintain our competitive edge. We
    have significant advantages with the U.S. vendor community and
    we want to maintain that as long as we can.
        Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. Anyone else? Ms. Crawford?
        Ms. Crawford. Yes. I would like to add that it is very
    important that the United States maintain the key intellectual
    property for the next supercomputer levels. If we control that,
    we have the high ground for the standards space base that will
    make all the decisions in the coming decade, and I would not
    want to cede that to another country. I cannot trust the U.S.
    nuclear weapons technology to a system built in China, say.
    That is untenable. I would like to not consider that those low-
    power technologies are developed ahead of time in other
    countries that we will use embedded in our intelligence
    systems. To me, it is very important that the United States
    take a very strong leadership position in this technology
    arena.
        Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. Dr. Reed?
        Dr. Reed. Yes, if I might add to that. It is part of the
    reason in my testimony I spoke very specifically to the
    importance of U.S. industry engagement. And as we move into
    this increasingly mobile device, low-power world, which is one
    of the key enabling technologies for future exascale systems,
    it is really crucial that the U.S. vendors maintain the
    competitive edge and strike a balance, as we do in terms of
    investment, between the global market and maintaining the
    unique capabilities for U.S. national security.
        Now, that is part of the role of the Federal Government in
    terms of, as Ms. Crawford said in her testimony, about shaping
    the direction of industry to ensure that we have the technology
    capability that we need.
        And I would echo that there are other uses as well. As we
    have talked about the rise of data analytics and its importance
    for national security and signal intelligence and other
    domains, that is another area where we must think carefully
    about many of the enabling technologies of which hardware is
    one, but the algorithms and other pieces need careful scrutiny
    also.
        Mr. Lipinski. Thank you.
        Dr. Giles. Yes, I would agree with what has been said. Just
    two points: I think it would be truly shameful for us to give
    up the elements of leadership that we have. And one of the
    things we pointed out and we asked in our exascale report was
    the criticality of time and of seizing the opportunity that in
    some way is presented uniquely to us to advance this field. But
    many, many countries will want to do that and we have a little
    bit of a time advantage because of our starting place.
        The other point, which is--it goes sort of in the direction
    of the open source software is the observation that a lot of
    the open science that is done in the world is done with
    international collaboration and with international connections.
    And we would, I think, like to still be in the position of
    having a lot of influence on the under-layer of that on which
    we will all build. But there certainly is international
    collaboration in science and I wouldn't want to minimize that--
    the importance of that for the open science community.
        Mr. Lipinski. Thank you very much. And I want to ask a
    question if the Chairman would give me just a few extra seconds
    here. I just want to also echo what I know some of my
    colleagues have stated. I know exascale computing is important
    but we have to make sure that we don't pursue that at the
    expense of other important R&D activities that ASCR is doing.
    And I yield back.
        Mr. Hultgren. The gentleman yields back. We will go through
    a second round of questioning if anyone would have other
    questions, so I will begin by recognizing myself for five
    minutes.
        And I would address this first to Dr. Stevens but also ask
    if any of you would have other thoughts on this and really
    following up on Mr. Lipinski's questions of timing and
    competitiveness. And I wondered, Dr. Stevens, if you would have
    some thought of what level of investment is needed for the
    United States to maintain global leadership in scientific and
    technical computing for the next decade? And then something
    specific of if we maintain current investment, at what point
    would China surpass us in computing capabilities? And then also
    just looking at dates, what type of approach and how much
    investment would be necessary for us to lead to a deployable
    system by 2020?
        Dr. Stevens. Okay. So on the first one in terms of the
    resources required to do this, in the plans developed by the
    laboratories, we estimated that in addition to the current
    funding levels that we have, we would need an increment over
    time of approximately $400 million a year. That would be split
    between the two partners, the Office of Science and the NNSA.
    At that funding level, we think it is feasible--not guaranteed
    but feasible--to deploy a system by 2020. Of course, we made
    those estimates a few years ago when we had more runway than we
    have now. And that investment would go to both hardware and
    software and some applications of them--more applications would
    be needed by that time.
        At the current funding level, not including the bill----
        Mr. Hultgren. Right.
        Dr. Stevens. --that is in front of us, it is estimated that
    we would not reach an exascale capability until middle of the
    next decade. We don't have accurate estimates of precisely what
    China will do but my guess is they will probably exceed us by
    the end of the decade if we were in that scenario. I don't
    remember your----
        Mr. Hultgren. I think that covered it. So really it is, you
    know, without the investment, it is going to be probably 2025
    before we would reach that level?
        Dr. Stevens. Absolutely.
        Mr. Hultgren. Do you think with the investment, is it a
    possible----
        Dr. Stevens. We have----
        Mr. Hultgren. --expectation to reach exascale levels by
    2020?
        Dr. Stevens. I think it is possible. I think we would have
    to get moving faster than we are now and of course the industry
    is ready to do this. Labs are ready to do it; academia is ready
    to do it. We just need the resources and the commitment and
    also to do it in a way that doesn't cannibalize the current
    program. We need the base--we have to build on the base both in
    the Office of Science and in NNSA, and so this is really,
    really looking at incremental resources unfortunately to do it.
        Mr. Hultgren. Okay. Thank you. Do any of the others have
    any thoughts or disagreement?
        Ms. Crawford. I would just add that understanding what the
    sustained commitment is, whatever that dollar level turns out
    to be, is critical because then we can plan into the future.
    And not knowing whether, you know, the base budget is cut and
    the exascale R&D budget is cut and we have got a commitment to
    do this and then we are--now, we must do that because we have a
    contract and yet that prevents us from doing something else. So
    not knowing is really difficult to plan ahead and manage it
    effectively. So understanding that and sustaining that is very
    important.
        Mr. Hultgren. I absolutely agree and it is one of the
    things I am passionate about. I know other Members of our
    Subcommittee and Committee are as well of bringing some
    certainty specifically to research and to science. When we are
    looking to advance these programs it is so important that we
    are not budgeting month-to-month, which this place, Washington
    D.C., has kind of fallen into the habit of doing, but it has
    incredible detrimental impact, I know, on the great work that
    you all are doing.
        So I for one and I know my colleagues on both sides of the
    aisle would love to see some of that change. We are going to be
    fighting for that.
        Let me switch gears just a little bit and address this to
    Dr. Giles if I could and also to Dr. Stevens. But with respect
    to achieving an extraordinary number of computations per
    second, exascale appears to be a somewhat arbitrary goal. With
    current budgetary constraints, could DOE consider slower
    systems that would still be by far the fastest in the world or
    how do you see that fitting into this challenge of kind of
    keeping up with the rest of the world if DOE were to say, well,
    you know, we want to do some advancement but we are not going
    to go for that larger goal. We will just kind of settle for a
    lesser goal. How do you see that impacting the work that you
    are doing and the work that other nations are doing?
        Dr. Giles. Okay. Well, I think the key research to lower
    power consumption, to identify the pathway that takes us to
    exascale is one that is defined by that goal but which is a
    sort of--has a certain integrity of its own. Okay. If you do
    that--if one does that and makes that commitment to do their
    research and to do that beginning development, then how far you
    take it is part of the deployment question of how big a machine
    you build with the technology that you have done the research
    for. It--so--at least that is my take on it. I am not the
    technologist that Rick is and you may have a comment on that.
        Dr. Stevens. Well, what I can say is that the laboratories
    are excellent stewards of the Nation's money----
        Dr. Giles. Yes.
        Dr. Stevens. --and we will buy the most capable systems
    that we can afford to buy when we have to replace and when we
    can replace the current systems. So I think that the question
    of, you know, can we settle is really a question of do we want
    to settle for not being able to do all the science or the most
    impactful engineering or address the most important national
    security challenges? We will do the best we can with what is
    provided to us. There is no question. I think lowering our
    sights though is not in our DNA.
        Mr. Hultgren. Right.
        Dr. Stevens. Right.
        Mr. Hultgren. No, that is helpful. Thank you. My time is
    expired. I will recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Swalwell.
        Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate your
    comments about providing more certainty to our national
    laboratories. And we know that it is not just the laboratories
    who need the certainty but also private industry or any
    contractors who depend on work from the laboratories.
        One of the first lessons I learned when I was a planning
    commissioner years ago on a local sign ordinance issue from a
    local small business owner was vote for me, vote against me,
    but just give me certainty and, you know, do not have, you
    know, month-to-month sign regulations that give us no certainty
    at all, which now I have learned here, as the Chair said,
    month-to-month budgets also don't serve our laboratories well
    or private industry well. And so I join you in hoping that we
    can find ways to provide more certainty.
        I was hoping to just go witness by witness briefly and if
    you could just tell me for my own edification, and I am sure
    many others are curious, what are the private/public
    partnerships that you have at your laboratories through the
    exascale program?
        Dr. Giles. Well, let's see. I don't run a laboratory.
        Mr. Swalwell. Sure.
        Dr. Giles. But I would note things like you do run a lab
    that does the INCITE program in ASCR that invites researchers
    from outside DOE and from industry and with the particular
    emphasis on some industries to use the most advanced facilities
    that we have, so I think that would be one that I would
    identify coming out of ASCR.
        Mr. Swalwell. Great. And Dr. Stevens?
        Dr. Stevens. Well, just a few that we have done in the
    recent past. We have got a collaboration with Pratt & Whitney
    developing more efficient turbine engines, with Procter &
    Gamble on a variety of improving consumer products, with
    Cummins in improving diesel engines, and Caterpillar improving
    their ability to model whole vehicles and including the
    transmission systems and so forth, with the Mayo Clinic in
    applying computations and larger-scale problems in
    metagenomics, and so on. There is a long list. Some of these
    are collaborations with end-user companies and some are
    collaborations with companies like IBM or with Intel and with
    Cray in developing next-generation technologies, and we also
    work with small businesses.
        So the laboratories have collaborations on both the end-
    user component of this technology and the company is developing
    the technology itself.
        Mr. Swalwell. And when I hear some of those companies, IBM,
    Intel, Cummins, Caterpillar, I think of billions and billions
    and billions of dollars of exports. Those are some of the
    largest exporters in the United States, and if we are going to
    truly achieve our goal of doubling our exports over the next
    five years, making sure that those companies can continue to
    play a part in reducing that trade deficit--we have about $40
    billion every month--is crucial and it sounds like the
    laboratories are helping them to do that so they can sell their
    goods and services to the marketplace outside the United
    States.
        Dr. Stevens. Absolutely. And we are also working with
    companies like Dow and DuPont and Johnson Controls. And it is a
    long list, right? And I think we exactly get this idea of
    helping American industry be more competitive.
        Mr. Swalwell. Great. And Ms. Crawford?
        Ms. Crawford. So rather than going through the long list,
    let me talk about the barriers for industrial adaptation of
    advanced computing. There have been a number of studies and
    there are three main barriers. One is the cost of establishing
    a supercomputing facility, the computer itself, the computing
    room, et cetera. The second one is the expertise, you know,
    having the skilled workforce that understands how to use these
    computers in a meaningful way for their products. And then the
    third is the software itself that helps them understand their
    products and how to improve those products. So the kind of
    partnerships that Dr. Stevens is talking about and that we have
    in our laboratory are helping to demonstrate to industry how to
    overcome those barriers so that they can in fact utilize this.
    And once they have firsthand demonstration and know the value,
    then they will start making the investments themselves at a
    higher level to drive their own productivity and
    competitiveness.
        Mr. Swalwell. Great. And Dr. Reed, I mean also just like
    Dr. Giles I know you do not run a laboratory but any public/
    private partnerships you are familiar with that are working
    right now and also helping the innovation economy?
        Dr. Reed. Certainly. And I have been in similar roles in
    the past. As I mentioned, I used to run an NSF supercomputer
    center and we did very similar things in Illinois when I was
    there. Advanced manufacturing was certainly a target, logistics
    and supply chain optimization. But in Iowa now, there are many
    issues around advanced biological modeling and how we think
    about the future of healthcare in terms of everything from
    modeling the characteristics of lungs and what the implications
    are for drug delivery, how we might work with companies about
    those issues.
        I would echo what Ms. Crawford said, though. What is really
    crucial in those engagements and use of high-performance
    computing is simplicity of use because the domain experts are
    interested in advancing either the technology or the science or
    its applications and less interested in understanding what
    those of us in the technology business might view as the really
    cool stuff.
        Mr. Swalwell. Right.
        Dr. Reed. It is a means to an end and so those software
    user interface issues are really important.
        When I was at Microsoft, I spent a great deal of time
    working with the community in science on exactly those issues.
    How do we bring the power of advanced computing into small
    companies and into individual's hands where, from their
    perspective, the ease-of-use that they find familiar in their
    mobile device or their PC extends seamlessly and apparently
    magically to exploit those advanced capabilities?
        Mr. Swalwell. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    This has been a great hearing. You know, I didn't pay enough
    attention to this stuff when I was in high school. I am
    learning a heck of a lot now in Congress and I could sit here
    for another few hours but I know our witnesses and our panel
    have other places to be. But thank you again.
        Mr. Hultgren. Thank you. Thank you. And I do want to thank
    each one of you for being here today on a very busy day on
    Capitol Hill. And with that, I just want to thank you for your
    valuable testimony and I want to thank the Members for the
    questions that they have had. The Members of the Committee may
    have additional questions, especially with competing hearings
    that were going on at the same time, so we will ask if you
    would be willing to respond in writing to questions that we
    would submit.
        And with that thought, we will keep the record open for two
    weeks for additional comments and written questions from
    Members and request for your response to those.
        With that, I again want to thank you so much for your time
    and for your wisdom and information today. With that, the
    witnesses are excused and this hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
        [Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
                                   Appendix I

                                  ----------

                       Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

                       Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
    Responses by Dr. Roscoe Giles
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.055

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.056

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.057

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.058

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.059

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.060

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.061

    Responses by Dr. Rick Stevens
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.062

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.063

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.064

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.065

    Responses by Ms. Dona Crawford
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.066

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.067

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.068

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.069

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.070

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.071

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.072

    Responses by Dr. Daniel Reed
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.073

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.074

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81195.075