Today’s HPCWire reports that the House Science Committee passed H.R. 28, the High-Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2005. What does this mean in real terms for researchers and HPC centers? To quote the story:

The bill, which was introduced by Energy Subcommittee Chairman Judy Biggert (R-IL), Representative Lincoln Davis (D-TN), and
Chairman Boehlert, would strengthen U.S. supercomputing capabilities by requiring NSF and DOE to ensure U.S. researchers access to high-performance computers, and by prescribing a comprehensive, balanced approach to the nation’s computing strategy. It would also place responsibility with the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to ensure a coordinated, on-going effort among the federal agencies that have a role in high-performance computing.

Some people may think the US is losing ground in science and technology, but for the time being at least, it’s still setting the pace in supercomputing. BlueGene/L, which was already number one on the latest Top 500, nearly doubled its performance after doubling its processor count. Back in mid-February, truckloads of components began arriving at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which operates the IBM built system for the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and the folks at LLNL added another 32,000 processors to the equal number already installed. Well, the early results are in. Roughly as expected, BlueGene/L can now crank away at 135.3 trillion floating point operations per second (teraflops), up from the 70.72 teraflops it was doing at the end of 2004. BlueGene/L now has half of its planned processors and is more than half way to achieving its design goal of 360 teraflops.

[CORRECTION] In the last sentence above, we mistakenly said that BlueGene/L “is more than half way to achieving its design goal of 360 teraflops.” Thanks for pointing out our error and thanks for the comments.

Grid-scape.org was recently launched in Poland as a source for grid computing information. Touting their site as a portal and

to create a home for every grid-oriented geek. Place where he or she can share his or her opinions on any grid-related topic and freely discuss with others.

It includes a blog similar to CTWatch. The site is obviously still in its infancy but as it grows it might serve as a nice stopping-off point for those interested in grid-related information from a European perspective.

The site is sponsored by Gridwise Technologies, which lists The Globus Alliance as one of several partners.

Carl Kesselman, along with other leading lights and with a little hosting help from Tabor Communications, has launched a petition to try to convince Congress to save the DOE’s National Collaboratories program. Funding from this program has been instrumental in the development of a string of grid computing successes, including GridFTP, the Access Grid, and many Globus-related tools, according to Kesselman.

The economics of supercomputing power and usage continue to evolve. Utility and on-demand computing aren’t new concepts, but for the first time IBM is making a large chunk of computing capacity available to its customers via its Blue Gene supercomputer in Rochester, NY. It’s unclear how well this cost recovery model will work for IBM using this machine, but it further demonstrates that there is a market for serious computational power without the need to own it.

The Presidential IT Advisory Committee (PITAC) has submitted its report to the President titled Cyber Security: A Crisis in Prioritization in which the committee emphasizes vulnerabilities to the nation’s critical IT infrastructure. Among the committee’s numerous recommendations are that the federal government

Increase Federal support for fundamental research in civilian cyber security by $90 million annually at NSF and by substantial amounts at agencies such as DARPA and DHS to support work in 10 high-priority areas identified by PITAC.

With the current administration’s track record on national security spending, it will be interesting to see the President’s response to these funding recommendations.

A copy of the report can be found here: http://www.nitrd.gov/pitac/reports/20050301_cybersecurity/cybersecurity.pdf