U.S. Moves to Bolster Supercomputer Stance
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is gearing up to prevent Japan from dominating yet another segment of the high-technology industry, the small but strategic field of supercomputers.
Supercomputers are used for the most complex computing jobs such as determining air flow over an airplane wing, designing new weapons systems, cracking military codes or mapping the human body’s genes.
Priced at $20 million apiece, the machines’ processing speed is so great it is measured in billions of computing operations per second.
Government officials are talking of increased funding, congressional hearings, interagency studies and a possible industry consortium to prevent major U.S. research and development work from depending on foreign models.
But scientists who do that research are less concerned about Japanese dominance of the field than by the possibility that the United States may keep them from buying the best machines available.
User Industries
“The real economic impact of supercomputers is not on the industry that makes them, it’s the industries that use them--aerospace, automobiles, oil,” said Sydney Karin, director of the San Diego Supercomputing Center. “We must be careful about any efforts to restrict the optimal supercomputers for these users.”
Federal officials are more circumspect. High-performance computing is obviously critical to science and engineering, which must not depend on outmoded technology, said William Wulf, assistant director of computing and information sciences for the National Science Foundation.
But Wulf added: “We must be careful to balance the need for cost-effective computing and having a vigorous indigenous supercomputer industry.”
The nation’s supercomputer makers have attracted attention after two disturbing announcements for the U.S. industry this month: NEC Corp. of Japan now claims to have the world’s fastest computer, while Control Data Corp. said it would shut down its supercomputer business, leaving only Cray Research Inc. in the domestic field.
NEC’s news had been expected for some time, but Control Data’s pullout--part of a $490-million restructuring to revive sluggish earnings--surprised government and industry alike.
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee was “shocked” by Control Data’s decision to close ETA Systems Inc., said Executive Director Harold Hansen.
