mrose@CHEETAH.NYSER.NET (Marshall Rose) (06/18/90)
Computer Project Would Speed Data NY Times, Friday, June 8, 1990 Businesses, Schools and U.S. Agencies to Join in Effort By JOHN MARKOFF The National Science Foundation plans to announce today that a large group of the nation's leading communications and computer companies universities and research laboratories and several Government agencies will begin development of a high-speed network that will allow computer data to be transmitted at speeds almost 700 times faster than possible over existing networks. It would be the first comprehensive attempt in the United States to advance the critical technological area of computer networks and is being called an important model for cooperation between business and government. The widespread support for the computer network project stands in sharp contrast to the reception received by other recent cooperative projects in high technology such as the effort to finance research in high- definition television and the joint venture known as U.S. Memories, that was intended to strengthen the United States in the semiconductor business. Those projects have foundered for lack of money or enthusiasm among Government and business. In Japan, the government and large corporations have already begun work on high-speed computer networks, known as data highways, that enable the transmission of the equivalent of about 160 hefty novels every second compared with only about two novels every second in even the fastest networks today. By conveying so much data so quickly, using the same optical-fiber cables now used by some long-distance telephone carriers, high-speed computer networks hold the promise of many new scientific and commercial uses , that could be available by the middle of this decade. These include the ability to transmit to and receive data from a hybrid of television and computer. The new device would have a picture and sound of movie-like quality and the capacity to allow the viewer to manipulate the images and data displayed on the screen and instantaneously exchange the information with other users. Other potential uses that could evolve from the new project include three-dimensional medical imaging that allows doctors thousands of miles apart to analyze lifelike, high- resolution images; far more accurate understanding and prediction of weather and climate because of the ability to link the power of supercomputers around the country, and multimedia teleconferencing that would combine video images and computer data, allowing business meetings without the need to travel. $100 Million From Companies The data network is being initiated with $15 million from the National Science Foundation and from a Pentagon agency that has financed research in basic technology. But more than $100 million will come from companies. including the International Business Machines Corporation and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, during the three-year project, executives at the foundation said. The venture "marks an important step forward," said Robert B. Reich, a Harvard University economist. "There are a host of technological areas in which the United States is falling behind to which this model might be directly applicable if it means developing skills and insights in new technological areas," he said. The computer-network project will draw together dozens of corporations and universities, including I.B.M. AT.&T., the MCI Communications Corporation, the regional Bell telecommunications companies and universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. Government laboratories including those in Los Alamos, N.M., and Livermore, Calif. and the nation's five supercomputer centers will also participate. A Pioneer's Brainchild The project is the brainchild of Robert E. Kahn, a pioneer of the nation's first computer network experiment, called Arpanet, and David J. Farber, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Kahn is president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, a computer technology research group in Reston, Va., that will receive the Government grant expected to be announced today. Mr. Kahn was director of computer science research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency participating in the project. Mr. Kahn said that he would not comment on the project until it had been formally announced by the National Science Foundation. Computer scientists said significant technical challenges remain to allow the transmission and reception of computer data at speeds above a billion bits per second, a goal of the new network. Transmitting computer data is clone in a way similar to the way mail has traditionally been sorted in post offices, said William A. Wulf, a computer scientist at the University of Virginia. Postal employees read addresses and place envelopes in particular slots. Similarly computer networks break data into packets, send them as strings of digital signals and then sort them when they arrive at their destination. The problem with very high speed networks, said Dr. Wulf, is that even the fastest machines that serve as gateways between the data highway and the computers they connect are not able to keep up with the stream of 1's and 0's possible with new networks. The challenge is therefore to develop a new class of ma- chines to serve as gateways. The development project consists of five experimental networks. The effort represents the first phase of a multi-year endeavor that supporters hope will ultimately create the national data highway. Project developers said they are still uncertain about the cost of deploying a nationwide high-speed network. It is possible, they contend, that the rapidly increasing technology of long-distance optical-fiber networks may generates a surplus in capacity, permitting low-cost delivery of data and digital video services. Support of Gore "This represents a great example of how industry and government can work together to develop a key technology needed for the effective use of a national network of data super- highways soon to put in place," said Senator Albert Gore Jr., Democrat of Tennessee. "It's not a huge amount of money but if it will provide a great many useful applications for the network." Senator Gore has introduced legislation that would finance the cost o developing a high-speed compute network to link the nation's super computer centers. The Bush Administration has said it supports a national high-speed computer network but has not committed to backing new financing for the project. One scientific project that will rely on the network will link a radio telescope array at the University of California at Berkeley with a Cray II supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications in Champagne-Urbana, ILL., and computer work stations at the University of Maryland. Such a network would permit astronomers to use radio telescopes interactively in ways never before possible, said Larry Smarr, director of the supercomputer center.