SENATORS PUSH ADMINISTRATION ON HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING

A bipartisan group of 24 senators is pushing the Obama Administration to continue its support of high performance computing and a Department of Energy effort to achieve exascale computing speeds within the next decade. Exascale computing involves speeds one thousand times more powerful than supercomputers are capable of today, and the Department of Energy has established a joint effort between the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration to pursue the computing benchmark. The Administration requested $136 million in Fiscal Year 2012 for the effort split between Science and NNSA. “We commend you for the support of exascale computing you have already shown by requesting the initial funding in the FY2012 Budget Request. Given the strong support our global competitors are receiving, it is imperative that the U.S. continue to commit resources to remain competitive in the HPC race to exascale capability,” the Senators wrote in a Nov. 8 letter to President Obama, which was authored by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).