The House Science and Technology Committee plans to meet tomorrow to mark up 4 bills, including the High Performance Computing R&D Act (H.R. 1068). The HPC R&D Act is very similar to previous efforts to amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, the act that established what has become the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program.
This version differs from the most recent attempt (H.R. 28, introduced in the 109th Congress) in that it doesn’t attempt to authorize specific agency activities. But otherwise, it contains the two provisions we particularly liked about the previous version. First, it directs the Director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of federal high-performance computing systems. Second, there’s an explicit requirement that the President’s advisory committee for IT (now a responsibility of the PCAST) review not only the goals of the NITRD program but the funding levels as well and report the results of that review to Congress every two years.
In previous Congresses, the various HPC acts have failed to become law for a variety of reasons. It seems the situation this year is slightly more hopeful — but we should have some better sense in a week or so, so stay tuned.
The markup will be webcast here beginning at 10 am ET. Should get quick approval by the committee.
If you’re interested in seeing what the bill would actually do to the HPCC, here’s an “as amended by” document. Red text is what’s added. Strikethrough is what’s taken away…
Update: (March 12, 2007) — The House passed the measure by voice vote. Details here.
Frances E. Allen, a former CRA Board member, has received the 2006 A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the first time a woman has been given this honor. Allen, an IBM Fellow at the TJ Watson Research Center, was chosen for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen was also the first woman to be named an IBM Fellow in 1989. The Turing Award was first presented in 1966 and was named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, is widely considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing.” It carries a $100,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation.
From the ACM press release:
Allen made fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of program optimization, which translates the users’ problem-solving language statements into more efficient sequences of computer instructions. Her contributions also greatly extended earlier work in automatic program parallelization, which enables programs to use multiple processors simultaneously in order to obtain faster results. These techniques have made it possible to achieve high performance from computers while programming them in languages suitable to applications. They have contributed to advances in the use of high performance computers for solving problems such as weather forecasting, DNA matching, and national security functions.
“Fran Allen’s work has led to remarkable advances in compiler design and machine architecture that are at the foundation of modern high-performance computing,” said Ruzena Bajcsy, Chair of ACM’s Turing Award Committee, and professor of Electrical and Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. “Her contributions have spanned most of the history of computer science, and have made possible computing techniques that we rely on today in business and technology. It is interesting to note Allen’s role in highly secret intelligence work on security codes for the organization now known as the National Security Agency, since it was Alan Turing, the namesake of this prestigious award, who devised techniques to help break the German codes during World War II,” said Bajcsy, who is Emeritus Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at Berkeley.
The House Committee on Science and Technology held its first budget hearing of the year today with testimony from Dr. John Marburger, director of the Presidents Office of Science and Technology Policy. The focus of the chairman and several of the committee members, including perennial science champion Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), was on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and the decreases to NSFs Education and Human Resources Directorate in recent years, along with some concern regarding NASAs space exploration and aeronautics funding. The opening statements as well as a web cast of the hearing are available online.
The Committee and Dr. Marburger for the Administration seemed to be in agreement that the increased funding for NSF, NIST, and DoE Office of Science were important and that the American Competitiveness Initiative is important for Americas future innovation and competitiveness. However, the Administration and the Chairman seemed to diverge when it comes to priorities. The Administration priority is research funding and Chairman Gordon said that the education recommendations of the Gathering Storm report should be an equal priority. The Chairman repeatedly came back to the fact that, while the FY08 budget request increases funding to NSFs EHR Directorate, that same Directorates funding has decreased by 50 percent in the last four years. He was also unimpressed with the Department of Education FY08 budget request in that he felt the STEM education funding should be at NSF.
You can see the entire hearing on the Committees web site.
From the CCC Blog
- MIT’s Subra Suresh reportedly to be nominated as new Director of NSF Ran Libeskind-Hadas
- Eric Brewer wins ACM – Infosys Foundation Award Ed Lazowska
- Chuck Thacker wins Turing Award Ed Lazowska
- FOCUS identifies “The Best Jobs in America� Ed Lazowska